Announcement

Collapse

The Rules of Pacers Digest

Hello everyone,

Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.

A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.

Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.

Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
See more
See less

Eddie George to star in play

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Eddie George to star in play

    http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashvi...nt?oid=1536036

    Actor-director jeff obafemi carr and NFL great Eddie George have a lot riding on the explosive drama Topdog/Underdog
    Game Changer
    by Ron Wynn
    cover-MAIN-PHOTO.jpg

    Eric England
    Article Tools

    * Email a Friend
    * Print
    * Share
    o Twitter
    o Facebook
    o Digg
    o Google Bookmarks
    o MySpace
    o del.icio.us
    o Newsvine
    o Reddit
    * Save as favorite
    Saving…
    * Add to List
    Loading…
    * Comments (1)

    click to enlarge Eric England

    * Eric England
    *



    Slideshow
    Eddie George and Dr. jeff obafemi carr in Topdog/Underdog

    Eddie George and Dr. jeff obafemi carr in Topdog/Underdog

    outtakes from a photoshoot with Eddie George and Dr. jeff obafemi carr

    Click to View 14 slides

    Ten years ago, on Sunday afternoons, Eddie George was used to standing in coliseums — taking the field with self-assurance before tens of millions. Five years ago, he stood all but alone in a North Nashville graveyard, and he was uneasy. It was the middle of the night, chilly and damp.

    With no one to hear, except ancestors lying in unmarked graves, the NFL great cleared his throat and began to speak:

    "Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul. ..."

    That wasn't good enough for the only living soul around who could hear him. Standing nearby, his reluctant acting teacher, Nashville film and stage actor and playwright jeff obafemi carr, made him do it again. And again. And again.

    "So what do you see?" carr demanded whenever George finished. "We'll stand here all night until you see."

    Frustrated, but even more determined, George looked around as he began to recite William Ernest Henley's 1875 poem "Invictus" yet again. Then he began to notice things. Despite the chill, winter was turning to spring. The moon was at the far corner of the sky from where the sun would rise. That's when George saw what carr was trying to show him.

    "I was at a crossroads!" George says, reliving the moment as he sits with carr on the stage of his teacher's Amun Ra Theatre on Clifton Street. "I understood what he was trying to tell me. I was at the crossroads in terms of whether [acting] was really what I wanted to do with my life.

    "I told him that yes, this was what I wanted to do, and that now I really understood why he had me reciting the passage from 'Invictus' about transitions in life."

    Five years later, they're about to find out how firm his commitment really is. On May 21 at TPAC's Polk Theater, for one night only, George and carr will star in Suzan-Lori Parks' Pulitzer Prize-winning play Topdog/Underdog — a two-man show that places extraordinary demands even on veteran actors.

    For George, it's the ultimate test of what he says is his chosen career path. For carr, it's the most public demonstration yet of Amun Ra's ambitions, which won't let him settle for a pat on the head for a good try. That's not why the Nashville-raised actor and theater-company founder famously set up residence on the building's rooftop in a lightning storm, to further its outreach efforts.

    "Our whole season has been about confronting challenges and going beyond the expected," carr says, scooping up and gently dropping three tent-folded playing cards over and over on a cardboard box lid as George sits nearby onstage. "We don't ever want anyone to come in here and say, well, they did a good job considering the circumstances. 'Oh, they did a good job considering they had only 12 lights to work with.' If somebody's sitting there counting the lights, your show is in trouble."

    Needless to say, carr doesn't want anyone coming away from this production saying it was OK for a play starring an ex-jock. It's time to rehearse — again. He picks up the cards.

    Topdog/Underdog tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers who've had to depend on each other since they were teenagers. Abandoned by their parents, Lincoln forged a livelihood by mastering the con game Three-Card Monte. His skill at deftly maneuvering the cards and outwitting all comers is legendary — but it also led to a life of crime and eventual imprisonment.

    Now Linc works carnivals and on street corners, wearing whiteface (as part of an Abraham Lincoln get-up) and trying to stay one step ahead of both his customers and the law. His younger brother, Booth, desperately wants to learn his brother's tricks, then ultimately best him.

    Their relationship is a striking blend of love and resentment, rivalry and closeness, and Parks' script requires nothing less than mastery in delivery, expressiveness and emotional range. Not only is every precisely worded line of Topdog/Underdog threaded with multiple meanings — in language that evokes rap, a con man's spiel, poetry and incantation — the actors must be equally convincing whether they're acting out the tangled sibling relationship or pulling off the mechanics of a street hustle.

    That's why, in every spare moment, carr sits at his box-top table, practicing the effortless "throw" that is both Linc's curse and his gift. It has to look like second nature. carr palms the cards, then waves his hand across the box top. Like magic, the cards settle so smoothly you can't see them drop from his hand. It surprises even him.

    "Hey, that was a good one!" he exults, gesturing across the stage to his partner. With a sly smile, carr says "an unnamed relation" showed him the moves — not just the deal, but also the conspiratorial look-around and the lean-closer murmur that are part of the three-card trade. George grins and congratulates him.

    Amun Ra's slate this season has already earned a reputation for daring, first with a stage adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, then Samuel Beckett's challenging existential vaudeville Waiting for Godot. But Topdog/Underdog may be its biggest risk yet. Considering that the play was originally performed off-Broadway by Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright (later by Wright and Mos Def), carr and George realize they are stepping into extremely big shoes.

    "We started rehearsing and working on this play last summer," carr says, sweeping up the cards yet again. "We've been constantly polishing the dialogue, working on the interaction and of course perfecting the card scenes. When I thought about doing this for Amun Ra, I knew it would require someone who was capable of really getting into the humanity of the characters, establishing a rapport onstage, and being able to show the complexity of their relationship."

    He thought of George, who made his Nashville stage debut with Amun Ra in a production of James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones. George had worked extensively with carr in various acting and speech classes, and the actor-director thought he was ready to step up. carr acknowledges that five years ago, when he heard the former Heisman Trophy winner and all-time Titans football great wanted to try his hand at acting, he was skeptical.

    " 'Is he serious?' was my first response," carr says. "You hear all the time from people that my son, nephew, niece, uncle, you name him, wants to be an actor. I wasn't interested in wasting my time."

    That changed, carr says, when he found out George had taken classes as a kid in Philadelphia at the legendary Freedom Theatre, one of the country's most established African American theater companies. The next step was to find out how serious he was.

    "I put him through tongue twisters, long soliloquies, Shakespeare, everything I could come up with that would easily discourage anyone who wasn't totally serious," carr remembers, laughing and throwing the cards yet again with robotic repetition. "He just took them all in, didn't flinch and kept getting better."

    Even so, it's a long way from acting-lesson boot camp to a play as difficult as Topdog/Underdog. carr says he made it even more of a challenge by casting somewhat against type — making straight-arrow George the envious, big-talking schemer, and toning down his own confidence and ease onstage to play the beaten-down Lincoln.

    "I chose the part of Lincoln because I'm a little older than Eddie, yet we're still close enough chronologically that the gap isn't so great," carr explains. "Lincoln's at a point in his life where he's not totally jaded, but he also realizes he hasn't fulfilled what he thinks his potential in life is and he knows he won't be able to do certain things he wanted to do.

    "His brother wants to know all his tricks, and he's willing to show him some things, but he also doesn't want him to ever forget who's really the best. So that's another layer that's between them, one that keeps emerging as you get through the play."

    There's no sign of any such tension between carr the teacher and George the eager apprentice in Amun Ra's afternoon rehearsals. If carr's job is to make the card-sharking look smooth, George's is to make Booth's attempts look realistically clumsy — the graceless imitation of someone who doesn't have the gift.

    George, as Booth, practices his three-card spiel, only to have carr interrupt him from offstage.

    "That's too smooth," carr tells him. "You had me believing it, and I shouldn't believe it." George smiles sheepishly. He gathers up the cards again, then does it rougher, messier, fumbling the cards. "That's it — good," carr says.

    George takes every director's note with furious concentration, breaking down every line reading to get the most meaning. It doesn't matter if carr stops him several times within a sentence: George listens, then incorporates the suggestion — make a gesture bigger, use a braggart's swagger, play up the vicious satisfaction Booth wants from beating a sucker.

    The same ability to focus on several things at once made George a great running back. At times, his Booth even moves with some of the same fluid, instinctual style George once showed on the field. But for the famed former Titan, Topdog/Underdog represents a graduate course in acting — his transition to a new identity.

    "My goal with this role is to totally get away from the notion that you're seeing Eddie George the football player onstage," George says. Sitting across from carr, who's slouched for the moment across a prop armchair, he's as coiled and keyed-up as carr is comfortable, fingers locked, knees braced as if for impact.

    "This is a very tough role," he says, "and acting in general in many ways is every bit as demanding as football. Acting is very physical. You've got to use your body, control your breathing and your voice, learn how to get to the heart of a role and be effective and credible in showing emotion. You have to get out of your comfort zone, challenge yourself and find a depth in yourself that you didn't know you could reach."

    His resolve was steeled, he says, by a recent encounter with an acting great. Because he felt it was something he just had to see — "just like if I could go back in time and see Barry Sanders or Walter Payton play" —George went with carr to New York to see the current Broadway revival of August Wilson's Fences, starring Denzel Washington. They even waited behind a barricade after the play with a throng of teenage girls, only to have the exiting star single George out of the crowd: "Hey, there's one of the greatest running backs in NFL history! Why are you standing back there like a groupie?"

    As they talked one on one, Washington asked George what he was doing. When he replied that he was acting and working on Topdog/Underdog, the star's response was humbling: "Then what the hell are you doing here?"

    "That let me know it was time to get back and go to work," George says. "He told me to make sure that you always respect the craft, always be prepared, never go out there without a purpose. I remember watching him in Fences, and there was a scene where he finds out that someone he loves has just died. His knees buckled, right there onstage, and it's incredibly moving.

    "I asked him where he got that. He said that he remembered being in the bathtub as a kid and pretending that he had drowned and was floating in the water. His father came in and saw him lying there, and his knees buckled. He remembered that vividly and had stored it in his brain for just the right time.

    "Of course, he also told me that he had to come up with something really good because he was afraid his father was going to really get him good with the belt," George adds, laughing.

    Last year, a sell-out crowd saw carr and George give a public reading of Topdog/Underdog. By now, carr says, they've been rehearsing the play for so long they've developed the kind of offstage rapport that only brothers have. Recalling George's jittery first moments before a live audience in God's Trombones, they roar with laughter, kid each other like siblings, and finish each other's sentences.

    carr says that's all to the play's benefit. Everything in Topdog/Underdog is so dependent on timing, response and reaction that the slightest change in direction, intonation or inference can completely alter the tone and sensibility of the production.

    "To be honest with you, both of us now really can't wait for this to begin," carr says. "We've been tweaking this, working on lines, going over it so much, that now we want to get that energy out there onstage. There are times now when I'll be just talking with friends or walking around, and I'll get an idea for something in a scene. We'll call each other and say, how about saying this line a little softer, or how about expanding the way we did the cards in that scene? We're both really ready for this to happen."

    Nature, however, insisted on scattering their deck. Both men were out of town when the flood waters rose in Nashville the weekend of May 1. The flood forced Amun Ra to end Waiting for Godot's run early. It also robbed the theater company of the grand locale that was to house Topdog/Underdog's post-production benefit gala — the Governor's Ballroom at the Opryland Hotel.

    But carr says Gaylord is helping him relocate the event, and it will still go on after the May 21 show, featuring vocal group SWV and a silent auction with WQQK-92.1FM program director Kenny Smoov hosting. Continuing the event, he says, is important for the same reason proceeds will go toward sending kids in Amun Ra's outreach classes on a trip to Africa — indeed, for the same reason he and Eddie George signed on to do the toughest, most exacting play they could find.

    "We don't want [the kids] to think in terms of zip codes," carr says. "We want them to feel that they can accomplish anything in the world that anyone else can, and they don't need to limit their vision or their reach.

    "That's the same goal we have for Amun Ra Theatre, and the reason that I went up there on the roof and stayed until we raised all that money. It was about sacrifice and purpose. That's what we want to show the kids, and also what we want Amun Ra to exemplify in the community."

    He palms the cards yet again. It's another clean throw, beautiful. carr catches Eddie George's eye across the stage, and the two exchange sneaky grins.

    "You know," carr says, cracking up his castmate, "I think I could do this."
Working...
X