The song, “My Heart Beats” was posted to Slumberland Records’ Soundcloud page ahead of their upcoming tour, which begins tomorrow at The Black Cat in D.C. Fans of the band will be pleased to hear that the song picks up right where their debut left off. Roxanne Clifford and James Hoare’s vocal trade offs, slightly noisy guitars and propulsive beats are all here — as is the expected stellar songwriting. It’s tempting for a lot of bands to play around with their sound too much after their debut — which accounts for a lot of underwhelming sophomore releases — but if “My Heart Beats” is any indication, that won’t be the case for Veronica Falls.

Veronica Falls know their strengths (and how to write great hooks) and “My Heart Beats” leaves me eager for more music from the Scottish quartet (although I’m far from tired of their initial offering). It also makes me wish I could go to their show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday. Be sure to check them out if you’re in the area.

Beyoncé stepped out for the first time last night, but Baby Blue was no where in sight. This begs the question — where is Blue Ivy Carter being hidden, and why haven’t we seen a picture of her?

Enough with the Suri Cruise act — it’s been done. Thirty days (and counting) after the birth of hip-hop royalty Blue Ivy Carter, no photos have been leaked. Quite frankly, we’re beginning to doubt Baby Blue’s existence. After the drama we suffered over the sequence of the newborn’s name (was it Ivy Blue? Blue Ivy?), we as a nation deserve some follow-up. We demand TwitPics.

It’s not like Blue Ivy’s parents are in hiding anymore, either. Proud new mama Beyoncé Knowles was spotted in public for the first time since giving birth at husband Jay-Z’s benefit show for United Way of New York City at Carnegie Hall. The star was wearing spiky Louboutins and an Alice Temperly dress with a level of cleavage usually reserved for Sofia Vergara (not that we’re complaining).

But if Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and even Grandma Tina were okay to have a night out, why not Blue? TMZ, is that tricked-out minivan really so hard to find?

Not that we advocate baby-stalking. We prefer to think of it as dedication to the Beyoncé and Jay-Z gene pool, or pure curiosity. Could these two particularly attractive superstars have had — gasp! — an ugly baby?

We’ll be here, killing time by watching that old Crazy in Love video, waiting.

MORE FASTER ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

Blue Ivy is the Name of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Baby, Not a New Smurf or 1940s Jazz Tune

The Douchebag Who Created ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Threatens to Sue Madonna

Adele to Perform At The 2012 Grammys

That is the promising premise — not so far from the truth — behind “Rx,” a new play by Kate Fodor.

Phil (Stephen Kunken, “Enron,” “High”) is a doctor who is conducting clinical trials for the drug SP-925 (Get it? 9 to 5), which will be marketed as ThriveOn. He falls in love with patient Meena (Marin Hinkle, best-known for playing Alan Harper’s — Jon Cryer’s — ex-wife on “Two and A Half Men”). But complications ensue, and soon Phil is seeking to be part of a new clinical trial for another drug, SP-214 (2/14, Valentine’s Day), which the pharmaceutical company hopes will cure heartbreak.

Now, Fodor is a playwright I first discovered as the author about eight years ago of “Hannah and Martin,” based on the real-life friendship between “Banality of Evil” anti-Nazi author Hannah Arendt and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (“Being and Time”), who was a member of the Nazi Party. And “Rx” is directed by Ethan McSweeny, who directed the 2000 Broadway production of “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (which is being revived yet again this season), a play about corruption and cowardly compromise in presidential politics.

Given who’s behind the show, one might be forgiven for expecting “Rx” to be a sophisticated modern update of “Brave New World,” scoring intellectually provocative points about the pharmaceutical industry or the American workplace or our general infatuation with instant cures. Are we a society of prescription, and prescriptive, addicts? Do we choose to turn life’s normal ups and downs into problems that need cures?

It is certainly a satire that touches on all these issues. But the touch is light and slight. “Rx” turns out to be your basic romantic comedy, veering more often towards the silly than the sophisticated. Meena works as managing editor of “Piggeries, American Cattle and Swine Magazine.” When she needs to cry, she goes off to a nearby department store and hides in a remote corner where they sell old ladies’ underwear – and suddenly Lee Savage’s simple set includes, suspending from the rafters, rack after rack of large colorful panties.

The play gets away with this goofiness because of its stellar cast, which also includes Marylouise Burke as an elderly woman who actually shops for that lingerie. Burke is one of those ageless troopers whose face is instantly recognizable even if you can’t place her name or roles (“Into the Woods” on Broadway, “30 Rock” on TV, “Sideways” on film, etc.), and she makes more of Frances than is written, especially when the character turns from fanciful into sorrowful.

Of particular note as well is Elizabeth Rich, who plays Phil’s boss, a no-nonsense businesswoman who wears a different outfit in every scene, a well-observed and subtly hilarious wardrobe by costume designer Andrea Lauer, the kind of fashionable armor that you imagine might be worn by that vice president at the Susan G. Komen foundation that set off the Planned Parenthood fiasco.

For up-to-the-minute theater news, views and reviews, follow Jonathan Mandell on his Twitter feed at @NewYorkTheater
New York Theater Facebook page

Rx
Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street)
By Kate Fodor
Directed by Ethan McSweeny
Set design by Lee Savage, costume design by Andrea Lauer, lighting design by Matthew Richards, original music and sound design by Lindsay Jones
Cast: Michael Bakkensen, Marylouise Burke, Marin Hinkle, Stephen Kunken, Paul Niebanck, Elizabeth Rich
Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission
Ticket prices: $65
“Rx” is schedule to run through March 3, 2012

Prop 8. which took away the right of same-sex couples to marry, is overturned in California, because it is unjust. Also because the phrase ‘domestic partnership’ is too dang wordy for the judges.

A judge ruled today that Prop 8 – the California referendum that took away the right of same-sex coupes to enter into the sacred bonds of marriage – was illegal.

The judge’s ruling was somewhat narrow, according to the Washington Post. Rather than stating that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the ruling stated instead that California couldn’t, by referendum, overturn a right that it had given those couples in the state, which is kind of a hogwash of lexical mumbo jumbo. In short, it it’s not quite the ruling that many wanted, but it’s a ruling that pushes the progressive cause forward and gives the number of states in which same-sex marriage is legal a happy little uptick.

The judges in the ruling, who appear to be lovers of literature and pop culture, also gave some great quotes and managed, according to Reuters, to mention Elvis, Shakespeare, and Groucho Marx. In the ruling, they wrote, for instance, “Groucho Marx’s one-liner, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution … but who wants to live in an institution?’ would lack its punch if the word ‘marriage’ were replaced with the alternative phrase,” like domestic partnership.

Well, um, sure. Losing part of America’s comedic heritage is perhaps even worse than, you know, rampant homophobia.

The court also said, “We emphasize the extraordinary significance of the official designation of ‘marriage,’ ” the decision says. “That designation is important because ‘marriage’ is the name that society gives to the relationship that matters most between two adults. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but to the couple desiring to enter into a committed lifelong relationship, a marriage by the name of ‘registered domestic partnership’ does not.”

I agree, of course. As an English major, I’m just glad to see that rulings can in part be based on the fact that creating “domestic partnerships” not only relegates same-sex couples to secondary citizen status, but also relegates same-sex couples to a horribly-named and over-syllabled institution. If I’d known how literary and linguistic judges were, I might have gone into law just to take an axe to all sorts of phrases that I have a linguistic distaste for. Is the judicial branch where English majors go to stick it to the man and de-jargon English, bringing back the eloquent verbiage of Shakespeare, and, um, Groucho Marx? Is there a secret English-language version of the L’Academie francaise among distraught English majors-turned-judges?

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons]

In her resignation letter, obtained by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Handel “openly acknowledges” her role in the decision to cut funding (a role that was initially denied and downplayed by Komen brass) as well as her either incredibly nearsighted or astoundingly stupid motivation of “reducing controversy” and “delivering even greater community impact” by cutting ties with the organization. Certainly whatever fantasies she had of the way such an ill-thought out, highly politicized decision would be greeted by the public were, ultimately, gross miscalculations at best, highly troubling delusions at worst.

You can read Handel’s entire letter here:

It might be too late to salvage Komen’s reputation, but surely Handel, in the vein of Sarah Palin, will have a luminous, Fox-sponsored career ahead of her, where she can continue to parlay her “non-political” statements into dollar signs and Colbert-worthy sound bites. More updates on the situation as they come.

MORE FROM MICHELLE KOUFOPOULOS

Komen Foundation Realizes Attempt to Screw Planned Parenthood Horribly Backfired, Reinstates Funding

Not Much of a Cure: Susan G. Komen Foundation Flips Off Planned Parenthood, Poor Women Everywhere

Why Defunding Planned Parenthood Will Bankrupt America

No, I’m not snarkily suggesting that Tom Brady is anything but a great quarterback. The guy has three Super Bowl rings, earned while he was winning the first 10 playoff games he started. But since then the Patriots supuhstah is 6-6 in the postseason, including Sunday night’s 21-17 loss to Eli Manning and the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI.

And yet the man is coated with Teflon. Criticism simply does not stick to Brady.

The story of XLVI can be simplified to two sets of names: Eli and Mario, Tom and Wes. Though there were plays made (and missed) by lots of guys all night long, the game pretty much came down to a pair of pass plays involving those four men that occurred about 20 seconds apart in the fourth quarter. One pair connected, and the other didn’t.

There was 4:02 left and New England, leading by 17-15, faced second and 11 at the Giants 44 when Brady threw a pass in the general direction of Welker, who was wide open near the 20. And, well, I’ll let NBC play-by-play man Al Michaels describe what happened: “It’s incomplete! Just a little bit behind Welker, who tried to reach up behind him and couldn’t haul it in.”

I used the Michaels call there because it was about the only honest critique of the play that I’ve heard. In the aftermath, pretty much all we’ve been fed is that Welker dropped the ball, both literally and figuratively. It’s true that if Wes had managed to make the catch, the Patriots would have had a first down at the 20 with less than 4 minutes left and the Giants down to one timeout. New England could have moved the ball not an inch farther and still been in position to kick a field goal that would have made it a 5-point game with not much more than 2 minutes on the clock.

So, yes, it was a big play, the kind that a big-time receiver like Welker usually makes. However, he shouldn’t have had to make a twisting, leaping try. He was wide open and Brady was well protected in the pocket, with plenty of time to hit his receiver in stride rather than throwing the ball behind him. But other than that “just a little bit behind” call by Michaels, I’ve heard hardly a word of criticism directed at Brady and lots of it heaped upon Welker. (Even from Brady’s wife, supermodel-turned-NFL-analyst Giselle Bundchen, who after the game responded to some razzing from Giants fans by saying, “My husband cannot f—ing throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time!”)

We didn’t hear criticism for the quarterback, either, after Brady handed the Giants their first points of the game, intentionally grounding the ball while in his end zone on New England’s first offensive play, making it 2-0, which soon became 9-0 after New York drove 78 yards for a touchdown following the free kick. We didn’t hear a bad word about Brady early in the fourth quarter, either, when he was nursing that 17-15 lead, had first down near midfield and, after being flushed from the pocket, heaved one downfield for a blanketed Rob Gronkowski. Predictably, the 6-foot-6-inch tight end with the high ankle sprain was unable to outmaneuver 6-3 Chase Blackburn for the jump ball, and the Giants linebacker came away with the interception. Brady would have been better off throwing the ball away.

On one of the endless highlight shows on NFL Network or ESPN or somewhere, an anchor described that miscue by laying blame on the receiver who “couldn’t get open.” Just like Welker later couldn’t make the twisting catch that shouldn’t have had to be a twisting catch. Just like on the first play of the Patriots’ desperate final drive, when Brady threw one for Deion Branch, running across the middle near the 40 yard line, wide open, with 57 seconds left. The Michaels call: “And it’s dropped by Branch.” The pass was behind the receiver and was tipped by a defender. Yet it was Branch’s drop?

Brady’s fourth-quarter passes were no less impressive than his postgame rap, though. Welker manned up and fell on his sword, saying, “It hit me right in the hands. It’s a play I never drop, I always make, and in the most critical situation, I let the team down.” As for Brady, he addressed a question about Welker and the “drop” thusly: “He’s a hell of a player. I’ll keep throwing the ball to him for as long as I possibly can.” Nice of you to support a teammate under fire, Tom, but you didn’t exactly throw the ball “to him.” It would have been nice for Brady to acknowledge that his pass was off target.

This is not meant to pile on Brady, who played a good game overall, at one point setting a Super Bowl record with 16 straight completions (none of which, by the way, he caught himself). This is more a commentary on how fans and media — and even athletes themselves, and their wives — buy into the established narrative about a player and tell his story from that perspective no matter what has actually happened on the field. Brady is known as one of the greatest ever, so when passes fall to the turf it must be the receivers’ fault. Imagine if those bad throws have come from the arm of Eli. Imagine how much fun the TV pundits and nitwits would have had with the “elite” thing.

Unfortunately for them, Eli didn’t feed their storyline. He was on the money all night, especially when the game hung in the balance. When the Giants took possession two plays after the Welker “drop,” Manning and company had 88 yards of green between them and the end zone and 3:46 to get there. Seven seconds later, they were at midfield. That’s because on the first play, Eli had stepped up amid pocket pressure and heaved a ball down the left sideline that dropped perfectly into the hands of Mario Manningham, who held on and got two feet down before being piledriven out of bounds.

Even though the ball was just at the 50 at that point, you just knew the Giants were going the distance. And sure enough, with Eli completing  6 of 7 passes for 74 yards on the drive, the team from the swamps of Jersey took the lead on a 6-yard run by Ahmad Bradshaw with 57 seconds left.

Bradshaw’s run was actually a mistake, though, since Manning had told him in the huddle that if he gets near the end zone on the second-and-goal play he should fall down at the 1, which would have forced the Patriots to call their final timeout and allow the Giants to run the clock down under 30 seconds before kicking a chip-shot field goal to win it. But Bradshaw, riding the forward momentum that had propelled him through the line, was unable to stop and fell into the end zone. I think that was the better play for him to make. Take the touchdown and the lead. For one thing, there’s no guarantee you’re going to hit even a short field goal. (Right, Baltimore Ravens?) Even though the quick score gave Brady 57 seconds — not less than 30, as would have been the case if the Giants had played fore the field goal — to try to win the game, he needed to get the Patriots into the end zone, not merely close enough for a field goal try. Bradshaw did the right thing … even if he didn’t mean to.

So on this night, Eli Manning’s one mistake — calling for the lay-down — turned out OK. And Tom Brady’s mistake was heaped upon someone else. What a life it is to be a Super Bowl quarterback.

The form is standard and designed to eliminate most of the work
customs and passport control would normally have to do. You write down
for them your flight info, the countries you visited before this
particular U.S. arrival and other information readily accessible via
air-travel manifestos and the stamp sections of your passport.

You then answer “no” to a series of questions about any fruits,
animals or disease cultures you may be carrying with you. Even if you
do have them in your baggage, those “no’s” ensure that customs will
not check them. Bizarrely, U.S. customs continues to operate on a
self-reporting system, meaning the only thing that will hold you up or
get you into trouble when arriving to a U.S. airport is honesty. (They
will ask you to step aside so that they can investigate any exotic or
banal declarations of papayas, salsa – or in my case a few years back,
mirabelles – as if they were defusing a chemical weapon.)

The State Department operates under a similar principle, which brings
me to the only section of the little blue form that irked me. Under
“Number of friends or family traveling with you,” I begrudgingly
marked “zero.”

That was not the plan.

In addition to the usual Christmas festivities, this particular trip
back to the United States was supposed to be about my family getting
to know my fiancée, who is a Georgian citizen. For some naïve and
misguided reason, we didn’t think that would be much of a problem.
Instead, we entered the strange world of U.S. State Department logic
with a smile.

If you are a foreigner traveling to the United States with no
intention of staying long-term (or even a month) then you are looking
to apply for a non-immigrant visa. Looking at the menu of
non-immigrant visas on offer for Georgian citizens, it was easy to
narrow down which ones applied to my fiancée’s particular situation,
and our particular trip – not going for work, study, etc. Just a visit
and a bit of sight-seeing.

So, we applied for the typical DS-160 Tourist Visa like any other
unsuspecting would-be visitor to the United States. Thus began a
feverous document-gathering process – verification of a $140
application-fee payment, a mugshot befitting the U.S. embassy’s
exclusive specifications, a long and detailed application and an
appointment for a face-to-face interview with a consular officer. It
should be noted that, by contrast, citizens of the U.S. and dozens of
other countries can come to Georgia visa-free as a tourist for up to
360 days. To renew the tourist visa, all one must do is leave the
country and re-enter during that 360-day period. I have been living in
Georgia since June 2009 on a series of tourist stays, none of which
have required any documentation.

We made it clear in the application that the purpose of the trip was
to visit my family, and that my family was helping to pay for the
trip. We were a bit unsure as to whether or not it was wise to
officially state that we were engaged, but we (again, naively) assumed
that the risk of being caught in a lie was far greater than the
benefit of fibbing on a few points. Plus, although the fact that we
were engaged might raise a few red flags, the purpose of the
face-to-face interview, in theory, is for the applicant and the
consular officer to iron out those details and for latter to make a
judgment call on whether this person appeared to be the type to
violate the terms of their visa.

In the end, the officer asked a few quick questions to my fiancée that
were already on the application, and then stamped the denial
form. Why? “You applied for the wrong visa. You are engaged to an
American.”

Now, there is such a thing as the K-1 “fiancée visa,” which I took a
look at, but quickly discounted as inappropriate for our particular
circumstance. According to the State Dept. website:

“The K-1 visa permits the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) to travel to the
United States and marry his or her U.S. citizen sponsor within 90 days
of arrival. The foreign-citizen will then apply for adjustment of
status to a permanent resident (LPR) with the Department of Homeland
Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).”

Now, I apologize for all of this mundane detail, but as in all
bureaucratic nightmares, that is where the devil resides. For a
variety of reasons, this K-1 visa made no sense for us because: 1.) We
did not intend to go to the U.S. for 90 days or more 2.) We did not
plan on getting married during the trip 3.) I do not live in the U.S.
and therefore could not file the paperwork from there 4.) My fiancée
and I live and work in Georgia and had no intention of immigrating.

But alas, the State Dept. operates under the assumption that anyone
who is even thinking about coming to U.S. plans to stay indefinitely,
and if they are in a serious relationship with an American, well, then
there is absolutely no doubt about their aims. The State Dept.
website’s section on visa denials betrays even greater hubris.

“Every alien shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he (sexism!)
establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time
of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant
status…”

“Failure to do so will result in a refusal of a visa under INA 214(b).
The most frequent basis for such a refusal concerns the requirement
that the prospective visitor or student possess a residence abroad
he/she has no intention of abandoning. Applicants prove the existence
of such residence by demonstrating that they have ties abroad that
would compel them to leave the U.S. at the end of the temporary stay.
[…]”

“Please Note: Under U.S. immigration law, American citizens may not
have any role in the non-immigrant visa application process.  Visa
applicants must qualify for the visa according to their own
circumstances, not on the basis of an American sponsor’s assurance.”

In short: everyone in the world who might, for any number of reasons,
desire to come to the United States is an immigrant until proven
otherwise. There is nothing any American citizen can say to vouch for
any of these so-called tourists. We know evil-doers and gold diggers
when we see them.

In addition to not trusting me, the State Dept. also apparently does
not trust the governments of Germany, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and a
host of other countries my fiancée has worked and studied in – never
overstaying her visa in the process.

In a clear attempt to irritate me further, representatives of the
embassy’s consular service contacted over the phone claimed there was
no rule that fiancées of American citizens were ineligible for tourist
visas – although that is exactly what the officer stamping the refusal
said. Instead, the voice on the phone said that it would be “very,
very difficult” for a Georgian fiancée of an American citizen to be
granted a tourist visa, but she encouraged us to try again – starting
with a new $140 application fee. According to their website,
re-applicants stand no better chance of being accepted until their
“circumstances change considerably.”

Translation: Until she dumps me, my fiancée is barred from entering
the United States as anything other than an immigrant, but, by all
means, continue wasting your time and money trying.

In addition to this being a great disappointment for my family and I,
the whole episode disturbed me because it is indicative of a larger
trend playing out in U.S. embassies across Eastern Europe, and likely
the world. It reminded me of a semi-mandatory meeting my fellow
American students and I attended at the U.S. Consulate in St.
Petersburg at the beginning of our studies in Russia in 2007.
Apparently, although our coordinator had been ducking their calls as
much as possible, the consulate had insisted we go in for an
orientation/scare session.

There at the consulate, a panel of awkward young Foreign Service guys
– one of which admitted he had just arrived in the country – droned on
about the dangers of living in Russia. Russians, in general, were not
to be trusted. That much they assured us. Beyond that, we should be
wary of public transit, bars, meals prepared by locals, and should
probably keep to our own kind — a wonderful introduction to a
cultural exchange.

In Georgia, the U.S. Embassy is a fortress, impregnable by U.S.
citizen and foreigner alike without a very-difficult-to-arrange
invitation by one of the bureaucrats of the Emerald City. The embassy
employees, which number in the hundreds, live in walled-off villas on
the outskirts of town and very few ever venture out to meet any locals
or expats who intermingle with the natives. All receive hazard pay
despite the fact that the crime rate in Washington is exponentially
higher than that of Tbilisi.

Earlier this year, I spoke with a friend of mine who has long worked
as an American journalist in Moscow and is herself betrothed to a
Russian. Although her husband is a successful businessman, she said
she had received all manner of condescension, inconvenience and
outright insult on official and unofficial levels from embassy folks.
Despite the fact that Eastern Europe made a stunning rebound out of
the ashes of the Soviet collapse over the last 10 years with
stabilized societies, strong economic growth and plummeting crime
rates, most U.S. officials seem to continue to cling to the notion
that it remains the chaotic hellscape that it was in the worst
chapters of the 1990’s, all research and data to the contrary be
damned.

Meanwhile, the preferred assumption is that anyone born in an Eastern
bloc country, given the opportunity to set foot on American soil,
would bolt off into the woods like a rabbit free from captivity. I
would expect that sort of myopic vision from the America’s less
worldly citizens, but it continues to stun me when it comes from State
Dept. employees as their own numbers and research contradict that
perception, and a simple stroll around town or conversation with a
local would tell them otherwise.

Although U.S. Immigration Services do not publish statistics on
applications for visas to the U.S. (for some reason), they do publish
data on the people it does give permanent residency and non-immigrant
visas to, from which I think it is fair to extrapolate relative
demand. And, based on the data on visa recipients, the draw of moving
to the United States from Eastern Europe is rapidly declining.

According to Homeland Security (DHS)’s “Yearbook of Immigration
Statistics 2011,” over the last 20 years, roughly 6 percent of all
people who have received permanent resident status in the United
States were from Eastern Europe. While DHS provides incomplete
breakdowns of small countries like Georgia, Russia, which represents a
large portion of the post-Soviet population, serves as a reasonably
good indicator for ex-Soviets seeking residency in the United States.
And, with Russia, the trend is stark.

While 433,427 Russian citizens received permanent U.S. resident status
from 1990-1999, only 167,152 did so between 2000 and 2009 – a 61.5
percent drop. Furthermore, the number of Russian residency recipients
in 2010 was 55 percent lower than their yearly average from 2000-2009.
That trend bears out across Eastern Europe, with the numbers of
residency recipients from Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia dropping
39 percent and 64 percent respectively in 2010 as compared to their
2000-2009 averages. Therefore, unless Eastern Europeans are suddenly
being arbitrarily denied residency in the United States, the numbers
show that perhaps they just don’t really want to live in the ole’ U.S.
of A.

Meanwhile, the numbers of Russians getting non-immigrant visas is
soaring – to 229,725 in 2010 from 111,270 in 2003. What does all of
this mean? Citizens of the ex-USSR are honestly more interested in
visiting the U.S. than living there, although the State Dept. does
their darnedest to make that difficult. Also, immigration into Russia
has greatly outpaced emigration from it in every year since the fall
of the Soviet Union. But, in the case of my fiancée, visiting the U.S.
is still not an option because of unofficial visa regulations — a
circumstance that fits nicely into consular officers’ arrogant
assumptions about desperate Eastern Europeans and their singular
mission to get a green card.

In the end, according to the World Bank, only 12,480 Georgians have
permanently emigrated to the United States over the past several
decades as compared with 634,372 who have resettled in Russia. Face
it, Washington, they’re just not that into you.

Speaking with my Moscow journalist friend, we were only able to come
up with one clear reason for the great discrepancy in the numbers and
the perceptions of U.S. embassy people – after the Cold War, the U.S.
can’t help but be a sore winner. Just like those consular officers in
St. Petersburg describing a parallel Russian universe where foreigners
have a strong chance of being kidnapped aboard public buses or awake
after a one-night stand missing a kidney or two, it was clear they
were reveling in a sort of collective victory.

These fantasies that are absurd for anyone who has really lived in
Eastern Europe are part of a deeply engrained desire by U.S. officials
to continue to look down upon these supposed failed states and the
desperate masses that were impoverished due by their empire’s defeat,
ostensibly at the hands of the U.S. It is all part of a continuing
victory lap, a touchdown dance made all the more inane by its clear
break from reality.

Unfortunately for me, that general annoyance with misplaced
triumphalism has now turned into a serious inconvenience as I will
reluctantly begin filing paperwork for the K-1 “fiancée visa,” which
is clearly designed for mail-order brides. The fact that the paperwork
has to be filed by me in the U.S. and I am officially referred to in
the documents as my fiancée’s “sponsor” makes this offensively
obvious.  In fact, due to two laws passed by Congress in the wake of
several mail-order marriages gone wrong over the past 20 years, as a
K-1 applicant, I will also be issued state-ordered reading materials
on domestic abuse and will undergo a background check before they let
me carry out my “sponsorship.”

In reality, the fact is that it was I who voluntarily emigrated from
the U.S. and choose to continue to live abroad with no plans to return
the self-styled land of freedom on a permanent basis. While living in
Georgia, I fell for a wonderful, bright, independent and successful
woman. We live together and have been together for more than two
years. Before planning this trip, we hadn’t even thought about, and
certainly didn’t plan on, living in the U.S. or her getting
citizenship. In the end, we’re pretty much your average young couple.

Unfortunately, we will have to indulge my government’s outdated
fantasies and undergo months of migraine-inducing and mildly insulting
bureaucracy (plus a $350 fee) for the opportunity for her to go
through the rather routine step of visiting my hometown and meeting my
family. At the same time, with U.S. population growth at its lowest
point since America sent most of its virile male population off to war
in the 1940’s, my country should only hope that my fiancée and I
decide to settle down there. At the moment, they’re not making the
strongest case.

Follow Nicholas Clayton at @ClaytonNicholas!

Recaps coming to TFT Monday!

Have you heard how desperately NBC needs a hit?

This season has been particularly hard for the peacock network — its sitcoms are cult favorites, but fan fervor hasn’t translated into impressive ratings. Smash, debuting February 6, might be NBC’s last hope. Check out Todd VanDerWerff’s analysis of NBC’s performance in the February sweeps here. And for a brutal analysis exactly what a Smash flop could do to the network, check out Josef Adalian’s article in Vulture.

Basically: NBC needs Smash to do well. Hopefully, very well. And as a result, promos for this show have been flying left and right. It’s getting promoted heavily during that big football game on Sunday and will premiere following NBC’s strongest show, The Voice, on “Super Monday.” If you have On Demand, you may have noticed that NBC’s already put the pilot in your cable box, along with a whole slew of featurettes about the characters. It’s on buses. It’s on subway posters. It’s every other promo on NBC — live and on-demand. They’re desperate to make this work, and considering they’re currently neck-in-neck with Univision, they’ve got every right to be. Make Smash a smash. The meta-messaging here is overt. (And check out Jesse Green’s article in NYMag on the making of Smash for more on the meta-textuality of it all.)

So what the hell is this show?

Well for one thing… it’s really good.

I watch a lot of television — a lot of television — but I’ve rarely been so captivated by a pilot. Now I admit, I am taken in by shiny things and pretty colors, and I have seen every episode of Glee to date, so I am this show’s target audience. But Smash is well-executed. Theresa Rebeck, the show’s creator and writer, manages to blend lightness and gravity in a fast-paced pilot with talented actors and nuanced performances. I say lightness because yeah, it’s a show about a musical about Marilyn Monroe, and yeah, it’s literally a story about young people following their dreams. But this is not a Glee after-school special. Those young starry-eyed dreamers are balanced out with conniving directors and politicking producers. High production values and fantastic performances carry the rest.

The ensemble cast gives you a lot of options for your favorite character. It could be American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee, playing Midwestern newcomer Karen Cartwright, new to the Broadway game. It could be voluptuous Ivy Lynn, played by Megan Hilty, who’s earned her stripes in ensemble roles and now wants a shot at the big time. It could be the co-dependent writer/composer duo Julia and Tom, played by Debra Messing and Christian Borle, who are kind of bitchy theater divas, but kind of fun precisely for that reason. It could be BAMF Eileen, phoned in by Angelica Huston, Broadway producer who takes no prisoners and surrenders no quarter. It might even be Derek Willis, lecherous directing genius, not above being seduced to cast his stars, played by one of my favorite British actors, Jack Davenport. The diversity of characters and the depth of talent are both very good indicators of the show’s success; apparently several celebrity guest stars are also lined up in the wings.

There are definitely moments where Smash becomes absolutely too cheesy. As much as I like the idea of a Midwestern wannabe starlet trying to succeed with honesty and integrity, breaking out into Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” just does not work for me — and I cannot imagine hardened Broadway casting directors being affected by it, either. The pilot sets up a lot of drama that could be painfully hamfisted or nuanced when it shakes down — there’s no way to tell. There is a point of high tension in the pilot that I think goes over well because Jack Davenport is amazing. But I am not so sure about Katharine McPhee’s ability to gracefully balance the show’s corniness with its humanity, either with her singing or with her acting abilities. While everyone else in the cast sacrifices likability for realism, McPhee comes off as almost nauseatingly earnest and ethical. Yeah, that might just be my East Coast cynicism coming through. Because a likeable protagonist (unlike Glee’s strident Rachel Berry) might be what Smash needs to appeal to broad audiences.

Bottom line: It’s a series split between highbrow dramatic nuance and lowbrow spectacle. That could be a showstopping balancing act or a split-personality nightmare. Tune in Mondays to find out.