Contributing to The Viral Media Lab

Lately I've been posting most frequently on my class blog.  Click here to check out The Viral Media Lab.  Also, send us links via Twitter that you think we may want to post on the site with the hashtag #vmlab... or just join the discussion!  

See you in a lab!

Guest blog by Sarah Lenssen from the #Ask5for5 Campaign!

Guest Blogger: Sarah Lenssen from #Ask5for5

Family photos by Mike Fiechtner Photography

Thank you Stephanie and nearly 150 other bloggers from around the world for allowing me to share a story with you today, during Social Media Week.

A hungry child in East Africa can't wait. Her hunger consumes her while we decide if we'll respond and save her life. In Somalia, children are stumbling along for days, even weeks, on dangerous roads and with empty stomachs in search of food and water. Their crops failed for the third year in a row. All their animals died. They lost everything. Thousands are dying along the road before they find help in refugee camps.

At my house, when my three children are hungry, they wait minutes for food, maybe an hour if dinner is approaching. Children affected by the food crisis in in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia aren't so lucky. Did you know that the worst drought in 60 years is ravaging whole countries right now, as you read this? Famine, a term not used lightly, has been declared in Somalia. This is the world's first famine in 20 years.12.4 million people are in need of emergency assistance and over 29,000 children have died in the last three months alone. A child is dying every 5 minutes. It it estimated that 750,000 people could die before this famine is over. Take a moment and let that settle in.

The media plays a major role in disasters. They have the power to draw the attention of society to respond--or not. Unfortunately, this horrific disaster has become merely a footnote in most national media outlets. News of the U.S. national debt squabble and the latest celebrity's baby bump dominate headlines. That is why I am thrilled that nearly 150 bloggers from all over the world are joining together today to use the power of social media to make their own headlines; to share the urgent need of the almost forgotten with their blog readers. Humans have the capacity to care deeply for those who are suffering, but in a situation like this when the numbers are too huge to grasp and the people so far away, we often feel like the little we can do will be a drop in the ocean, and don't do anything at all.

When news of the famine first hit the news in late July, I selfishly avoided it. I didn't want to read about it or hear about it because I knew I would feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable. I wanted to protect myself. I knew I would need to do something if I knew what was really happening. You see, this food crisis is personal. I have a 4-year-old son and a 1 yr-old daughter who were adopted from Ethiopia and born in regions now affected by the drought. If my children still lived in their home villages, they would be two of the 12.4 million. My children: extremely hungry and malnourished? Gulp. I think any one of us would do anything we could for our hungry child. But would you do something for another mother's hungry child?

My friend and World Vision staffer, Jon Warren, was recently in Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya--the largest refugee camp in the world with over 400,000 people. He told me the story of Isnino Siyat, 22, a mother who walked for 10 days and nights with her husband, 1 yr-old-baby, Suleiman, and 4 yr.-old son Adan Hussein, fleeing the drought in Somalia. When she arrived at Dadaab, she built the family a shelter with borrowed materials while carrying her baby on her back. Even her dress is borrowed. As she sat in the shelter on her second night in camp she told Jon, "I left because of hunger. It is a very horrible drought which finished both our livestock and our farm." The family lost their 5 cows and 10 goats one by one over 3 months, as grazing lands dried up. "We don't have enough food now...our food is finished. I am really worried about the future of my children and myself if the situation continues."

Will you help a child like Baby Suleiman? Ask5for5 is a dream built upon the belief that you will.

That something I knew I would need to do became a campaign called #Ask5for5 to raise awareness and funds for famine and drought victims. The concept is simple, give $5 and ask five of your friends to give $5, and then they each ask five of their friends to give $5 and so on--in nine generations of 5x5x5...we could raise $2.4 Million! In one month, over 750 people have donated over $25,000! I set up a fundraiser at See Your Impact and 100% of the funds will go to World Vision, an organization that has been fighting hunger in the Horn of Africa for decades and will continue long after this famine has ended. Donations can multiply up to 5 times in impact by government grants to
help provide emergency food, clean water, agricultural support,
healthcare, and other vital assistance to children and families suffering in the Horn.

I need you to help me save lives. It's so so simple; here's what you need to do:

1. Donate $5 or more on this page (http://seeyourimpact.org/members/ask5for5)
2. Send an email to your friends and ask them to join us.
3. Share #Ask5for5 on Facebook and Twitter!

I'm looking for another 100 bloggers to share this post on their blogs throughout Social Media Week. Email me at ask5for5@gmail.com if you're interested in participating this week.

A hungry child doesn't wait. She doesn't wait for us to finish the other things on our to-do list, or get to it next month when we might have a little more money to give. She doesn't wait for us to decide if she's important enough to deserve a response. She will only wait as long as her weakened little body will hold on...please respond now and help save her life. Ask 5 for 5.

Thank you on behalf of all of those who will be helped--you are saving lives and changing history.

p.s. Please don't move on to the next website before you donate and email your friends right now. It only takes 5 minutes and just $5, and if you're life is busy like mine, you probably won't get back to it later. Let's not be a generation that ignores hundreds of thousands of starving people, instead let's leave a legacy of compassion. You have the opportunity to save a life today!

(And check out this wonderful article in the Huffington Post by @2morrowknight about the #Ask5for5 Campaign.)

The Rise of the Female Geek

Hey!  Look at me --->  :)

Hi all!  I've been away for a while, but I'm back now and I'm updating the blog.  A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of being featured in the brilliant @2morrowknight & @Paul_Steele's Huffington Post #twitterpowerhouse post about girl geekery.  I never got a chance to post it here, so I'm doing it now.  Better late than never. :)  Click here to check it out!  I'm so honored to be included in a list with an absolutely incredible group of women.  Several months later, I'm still ecstatic!!

Thanks so much Sean & Paul.  #YouRock.  ... and to all the wonderful women in the post: you're awesome!

Molly Jong-Fast & Her Killer-Chic Social Climbing

Check out my Molly Jong-Fast profile in the 12th Street Online & also my review of Jong-Fast's witty and hilarious new book, The Social Climber's Handbook.

Get the book.  It's brilliant and cinematic and I hope someone makes it into a movie.  It could be the new Upper East side slasher show incarnation of Dexter for the Desperate Housewives.   Yes?

And be sure to follow @DaisyGreenbaum on Twitter!!  She's super fabulous and full of surprises.
*wink*

The Bin Laden Social Media Recap

I want to thank my global village for the support.

We live in a real world straddling a growing cybersphere of social media information that parallels reality, flowing in tandem with unfolding events. Social media shadows our corporeal bodies, leaving a trail along the ‘feed and a shimmering data afterglow.  Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc have changed the way we understand the news. 

Last night I was tracking the social media response to the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.  I was continually fixated on my Twitterfeed because I was immediately connected to surreal conversations about the news via celebrities like @Alyssa_Milano, links to how the news leaked on  Twitter by @keithurbahn (Rumsfeld's former chief of staff), the Osama Bin Laden obituary (seconds after it was posted last night, via @nytjim), and photos and live streaming Twitvids of people celebrating around the country (with hashtags like #groundzero). 

The Osama news was trending on Twitter before the television stations made the announcements. A Twitter account for @GhostOsama began circulating, chirping from “hell.”  With only 8 tweets, the @GhostOsama Twitter account attracted over 16,000 people in less than 2 hours.  And Obama hadn’t even addressed the country yet.  

Even Michael Moore (@MMFlint) was retweeting @GhostOsama:

Immediately after CNN started to report the story, Mashable noted that people were checking in to a Post-Osama Bin Laden world via an “Osama Bin Laden Gonathon” on Foursquare (a moving target):

Minutes after Obama addressed the country, Google had mapped the location of Osama Bin Laden’s compound and it was tweeted out by The Atlantic (via @RTDnews):  

Soon after that, Mashable reported that Facebook group “Osama Bin Laden is Dead” went viral. 

News came from TechCrunch of a man (@ReallyVirtual) relaxing in the mountains of Pakistan who broke the story of the Bin Laden raid accidentally on Twitter, complaining of unusual helicopters that he wanted to swat because they were ruining his vacation:

The big news of the Bin Laden death announcement broke first on Twitter and was followed by a Psychology Today story about Bin Laden and the “psychology of closure.”  

And then in true social media style, the new media Bin Laden coverage became a separate story (check out this article in AdWeek or this one from cnet).  People marveled at the way the news was constantly unraveling, revealing itself on a ‘feed and going viral even before the networks could comment or the president could address the country.  And of course, Tweet Jesus (@Jesus_M_Christ) went to town on this one:

& Check out @ariannahuff's "Photo of the Day":

News suddenly has people flocking to the Internet for a world-community commiseration that eerily resembles group therapy (with celebrities, friends, and strangers all over the world).  And I'm thankful for that.  Cyber-news participation changed my experience, hitting me with multiple perspectives and bits of data, bizarre commentary, comic relief, excitement, celebration, and a whole slew of folks who were uncomfortable or confused.  Rather than being bombarded by exploitative information, I was finding myself immersed in a rich web of understanding.

Facebook and Twitter were exploding with complex emotions, becoming like a digital focus group for humanity, spreading awareness, information, cultivating perspectives from around the world – and in real-time.  This enhanced my experience and amped up my emotional response to the news because I had an immediate community of people to share it with.  The web brought the global village together to discuss the death of Osama Bin Laden.  It’s still ringing in my ears, echoing like a surreal mashup of the Wizard of Oz, visions of the almost-viral hashtag #DingDongTheWitchIsDead, dancing through my consciousness and keeping me enthralled.  I'm still not even sure how I feel about the whole thing, but I'm thankful to my global community for the easily accessible understanding and perspective.

*More great articles:

"Twitter Doesn't Supplant Other Media, It Amplifies It" (TechCrunch)

"How The Attack on Osama Bin Laden Was Live-Tweeted" (FastCompany)

"The 7 Stages of the News in a Twitter and Facebook Era" (GigaOm)

Film & The Future of Narrative Soul: Thoughts

I was thinking about the connections between Hanna:

and the semi-recent film, Never Let Me Go:

There is something immensely creepy about scientifically engineered humans -- soulful, expendable, throwaway people (and this is a theme in both Never Let Me Go & Hanna).  It made me wonder about nature versus nurture when nature is so heavily nurtured.  There was a really interesting article in Discover about nature and nurture in the film, Hanna.  Click here to read "Hanna: A Transhuman Tragedy of Nature vs Nurture."

In this www.high-tech world of "ambient awareness" via Twitter and the imminent Google chip implant, what are the boundaries of the human body, the reaches and worth of a soul?  We're scientifically engineering our own memories, digitally enhancing, click-and-dragging our emotions into compartmentalized albums on Facebook.  Does new technology give us longer lives, or lesser appreciation for the lives we create? In terms of reality extending beyond the narrative of our lives -- on blogs and Facebook walls -- and becoming stretched and indestructible like a science fiction-esque cloudless sky of singular consciousness, I think of Zadie Smith's incredible essay, "Generation Why."  Click here to read the whole article.  How does the timelessness of a cyber-sky affect the crafting of our personal design, avatar personas, online presences, and beautifully fragmented-and-integrated, constantly moving-and-improving personal narratives?

When we undulate involuntarily along a 'feed, moving like breath, rhythmic and typing, editing has become synonymous with existing.

Check out this amazing short film about the 'Today' project by Jonathan Harris.  Harris creates and maintains a permanent string of images as a narrative life memory by taking a picture every day (it's like stop-motion soul-scribing):

This reminded me of something I listened to a while back on This American Life called 'Plan B.' The story near the end of the program reveals the rather mundane and somehow surprising and heartbreaking fate of inanimate objects.  Click here to listen to the program.

Everything leaves traces behind.  Everything has a narrative reality.  But how permanent can a narrative become in terms of the traces it leaves behind?  In the film Never Let Me Go, Kathy stands on a hilltop where lost things vanish.  The feeling of that scene made me think of the fate of people as 'things' in science fiction and how modern science is transforming the fate of the narrative into cyber-sci-fi (even transforming within the narrative to extend beyond the boundaries of the narrative -- soul and memory dissipating in an easily accessible and expansive digital sky).  In the story of our lives, humans trickle down a hill, fall to pieces and disappear into a Milky Way river of lost objects, live-streaming over the narrative horizon.  We are carried away in the afternoon breeze.  Gone?

Digital imprints are impressive.  Nothing is ever lost or permanently erased on the Internet.  We can shape beautiful designs and memories in the pixilated sand, untouched by the wind.

... just a passing thought :)

Fire and Rain

You may have completely forgotten about Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty, starring a then 16-year old River Phoenix.  It's a beautiful film.

If you've been honoring the dearly departed director with 12 Angry Men, Network and Dog Day Afternoon on a loop & you're looking for another Lumet masterpiece, definitely check this one out:

That scene still makes me cry.

The Cherokee: An Emerald City Wheezes

T

Click here to read my essay in the 12th Street Journal: 

An Emerald City Wheezes: A NYC Walking Tour of the Cherokee Apt. Building on 78th & York

Click here for my LoveCinema 'Digirazzi Report' posts.  

Click here to check out my post on the Top 10 Blog: Top 10 Dream Films: Reality?! Never!

"Steph: The Movie"

Poster by Rick Slusher (@TheSlush)

Music Box Hanna

After a phenomenal brunch at Good Enough to Eat on the Upper West Side, we headed to the Lincoln Square Theater (a truly Disney-fied wonder.. they can bury me there) to see the film Hanna.  My thoughts on the film:

Open the music box.  Inside, the ballerina is lethal.  She whirls to unheard music, feels nothing, just misses the heart.  Once upon a time, a girl with icy white eyebrows emerged from her enchanted house in the woods.  The rest is written in a fairy tale – the Grimm kind.

Hanna is extraordinary.  It was directed by Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, The Soloist).  I won't give away too much here because I like the idea of diving into this film and getting swept away.  It's an adrenaline flick, the kind of movie that catapults you out of your awareness.  It's a fairy tale that feels exotic, Grimm.    

The film focuses on a mysterious and icy cool young girl named Hanna (the ridiculously magical Saoirse Ronan) living and training with her father (a bearded and bedraggled Eric Bana) in the middle of nowhere.  Seriously, young Hanna guts a deer in the first 5 minutes of the film and you know she means business.  Hanna has no expression, no fear.  Her eyes radiate from a mummy mess of animal furs.  It's as if she was somehow formed in a world of ice.  She has luminous blue eyes -- an unrelenting and guiding force of the soul -- and a face that has been chipped away to reveal an ice-picked princess, a ghost.  She's a weapon: sheer, sharp, deadly cool and more like the coil that spins the music box than the ballerina trapped inside, endlessly spinning (imagine the vapid expression of a carved face-suddenly awakened). The film emerges from the forest at a high speed driven by the thumping heart of The Chemical Brothers score, pushing the narrative forward, cutting and whirring inside a box (a different world), whirling around inside itself.  

Hanna is pursued by a Cate Blanchett (the most stunning Big Bad Wolf in the history of the fairy tale) and that's essentially all I'm going to say about the plot:

A few quick associations:

Hanna reminded me of a Tom Tykwer film.  It had that femme-techno urgency a la Run Lola Run or The Princess and the Warrior (and Soairse Ronan's ravishingly washed out look is like the flip side of Franka Potente's eery angelic grace):

Also, check out Tykwer's short from the film, Paris Je T'aime (it has Hanna's whirring urgency and emotional tempo): 

Saoirse Ronan is so expressive and so lovely, it's hypnotic to watch her when she's still:

She was nominated for an Oscar for Wright's Atonement at the age of 13:

Wild and wielding a bow and arrow, I can absolutely see why Ronan was considered for the Katniss role in the upcoming film adaptation of the book, The Hunger Games.  And this is an interview with Ronan:

I was considering Ronan as a young Sarah Polley: 

And the deadly father-daughter dynamic reminded me of Kick-Ass:

or The Professional:

or even Paper Moon:

Let's think of Hanna as a world inside the music box.  Experience the film the same way you would the box.  It's not the typical movie that aims directly for the heart.  It appears to miss its target on purpose  It's cyclical.  It opens and shuts.  It begins and ends on the same moment - missing the heart (literally, figuratively).  Some said the film was lacking an emotional core, but I believe the emotion just slipped in at a different place (at a faster pace).  It felt the way music does.  It moved like music.  (Click here to read about the psychology of music.)  Music tells us how to feel.  The film-music's feeling drove us into the coil, pumped us through the techno-beating heart of Hanna.  It's an active barometer, intimate and unreal, seeping into plot and iris.  The music inside transports us, moves us.  And then we shut the box.  The music stops.  After all, what do you find at the heart of a music box?  Cranks and levers, a spinning doll.  Music.  

For the fanatic, here's an additional Hanna reading list - enjoy!

Click here to read: "Hanna: Saoirse Ronan, a Jason Bourne for the Glee generation" from the LA Times.

Click here to read: "Joe Wright and Saoirse Ronan Talk Hanna, Fairytale Violence and Girl Power" from The Finger Dandy.

Click here to read The Rolling Stone review of Hanna.

Click here to read Roger Ebert's Hanna review.

... a few of my favorite things

Yes, for some reason, I think we can find the meaning of life here:

Perhaps we can play with Marlo & dash through the cyberstreets, looking for love:

Or what about a little sunshine?

Summer Lovin'

Soulful, Zooey-ful, and with a dash of Henry Mancini:

For those of you who love music and live for the vicarious celluloid summer fling, check out the beating heart mix tape movie that is (500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and 60s ingénue-chic Zooey Deschanel.  It’s a ‘boy meets girl’ montage set strikingly against the Hallmark grain.  (500) Days shuffles the deck, leaving snapshots lost in time, like stars in space, hanging effortlessly in the darkness.  They’re groovy, serene, never truly silent even as they assault your dreams and flash tirelessly beyond the first days of a new love. The boy is pining.  The girl of his dreams breezes through his life with the blue-eyed soul of, well, Zooey Deschanel.  That bitch.  We love her.

For those of you who haven’t seen Deschenel’s classic first-love flick, All The Real Girls, I slap your wrist.  Shame.  It’s a doozy.  Here’s the trailer:

(500) Days is like a sky-lit marquee of light-headed joy. A familiar song brings with it the sharpness and clarity of a painful, perfect memory. Music is a trigger. Perception is distorted, and there is no reason behind the rhythm and the flow.  Fragments fly at the heart.  The soul is weighed down in dancing debris. (500) Days of Summer jumps around in time, zig-zags, brands the mind, lights up.  It’s an ipod shuffle of love.  It flips through tidbits, fractured joy, an essence of a relationship.  Here’s the trailer:

Aaaaaaaand, a great scene from the film:

If you long for the nonlinear approach to love, perhaps you’d enjoy a peek back at the 1967 film, Two For The Road, starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn.  The film ricochets around in time, a lot like (500) Days of Summer, only it spans decades with a similar effect: Enchantment and a swift and bittersweet oozing tune to strum the heart (classic score by Henry Mancini).  Here’s the trailer:

If you want the totally irreverent beat without the heartbreak, look back to the old Dennis Potter series, Lipstick On Your Collar.  For a quick pick me up on YouTube, you can ogle the young Ewan McGregor and his blue suede shoes as he attempts to lip-synch his way out of a drab office and dazzle us with his shiny teeth.  Yeah, he’s vampin’ it up, but good.  Check it:

and one more hip swivel for the mix tape:

What can I say?  Love is strange:

 

Just Ask The Song…

Passing Strange finds a larger audience, thanks to Stew, Spike Lee, & IFC

True lovers of cinema have access to “The Real.”  The phenomenal rock musical and Tony Award winning play, Passing Strange has been given new life, access to a wider audience, and a slick new silver screen stage.   Spike Lee’s filmed version of the play is available on DVD and if you haven't seen it yet, it's absolutely unmissable.

A rock musical created by long-time musician, Stew -- an experienced performer and first-time Broadway sensation -- Passing Strange is a wildly moving, boundary-leaping, autobiographical play.  You can read about Stew’s journey here.  To delve deeper into the idea of cultural clichés that fueled the musical’s themes and for more background on Stew, check this article in Psychology Today.

Passing Strange is the story of a rebellious young black artist, traveling in search of art and love, a place, a song, “the real.”  Stew wrote Passing Strange to “work the wound” of his own adolescence, and it was a special experience for the select few who had the opportunity to make it to Broadway or the Public Theater.  Spike Lee recorded a few of the historic performances, including the closing night show, and he pieced together a kinetic piece of electric live theater, smoothed out over celluloid.

Passing Strange, named in part for a passage in Othello referring to the wooing of Desdemona, has several meanings (as does wooing).  Stew spent a lifetime wooing an audience.  He was wooing a shadow of himself in the form of the play’s title character, Youth.  He was passing time -- indescribably strange, unsettling in its rhythm.  Stew was passing through life, memory, cliché, the many masks that a person wears when seeking authenticity of life, of the self.  He was passing through guises, incarnations, the ebbing of the flow, the many dimensionalities of ‘reality.’  A beat passing through the soul feels like this, moves like this.

From his website, Stew recalled in an interview:  “Obviously, the term “passing” has deep historical meaning for any African American my age or older. My grandmother was light enough to pass. But the kid in this play discovers there’s more to passing than just black folks passing for white. The term “passing” also has to do with time passing, of course.” It far transcends skin color.

Stew’s heartbreak simmers behind wise eyes shaded in orange tinted glasses, oozing through rough guitar riffs and the cracked voice of a narrator lost in song.  His show is passing through lapsed time, soaking the scars in painful, strikingly cathartic melody.  To face the past as a direct reaction to the present, you must twist your perception, backbend, bleed as you breathe, shout.  You must “ask the song.”

And now we all have the opportunity to watch Stew dance to his own metronome, and it’s more than “alright.”  It’s transcendent.  Click here to visit the film’s awesome website for more details, and ogle the scenes from the movie.  You can also click here for the New York Times blog with sound byte snippets from Stew and Spike Lee.

Onscreen, the anti-musical sensation Passing Strange stays true to itself, to the source, to Stew.  It swelters in the orange shade of electric guitar, settles into the sunset.  Never fades.

Now is the Time to Revisit “A Completely Cool, Multipurpose Movie”

“What do cars have to do with books, you might ask?”

David Byrne has been a pop icon for quite some time now.  He’s most notably a fabulous musician.  Over the past year, he’s been touring the country to promote the album Everything that Happens will Happen Today, his recent collaboration with Brian Eno.

Think back and you’ll find that Byrne is very much a long-term, multipurpose human, an avant-garde writer, artist and director.  We mustn’t forget about Byrne’s most important contribution to 80s cinema, True Stories.  Check out Byrne on the Celebrity Friends application for more information on the many artistic Byrne projects that have transpired over the years.  You’ll be surprised by his range, his silliness, his genius.. and his oversized suit-wearing capabilities.

And perhaps now is the time to take a look back at the classics.  Vintage Byrne is still vital film entertainment.  The 80s Byrne classic True Stories, dubbed “A Completely Cool, Multipurpose Movie” is as relevant now as it ever was.  You’ll marvel at the music (the time-warp, the familiarity, the awesome karaoke prospects of “Wild Wild Life”).  Queue it up, and feast on the delicious pop fanatic dream world of Virgil, Texas.  Take a tour with Byrne as your guide.  The Talking Heads provide the score.

True Stories was originally released in 1986.  It was written by Byrne, Stephen Tobolowsky, Beth Henley, and directed by Byrne.  Supposedly inspired by grocery store tabloid headlines, the film follows Byrne as he drives through small-town Texas in a big red car, expressionless face shadowed under the rim of a giant cowboy hat.  His voice is monotone, soothing, coolly enamored with the wide expanse of middle American nothingness. He enters Texas like a kid riding a red blur in slow-mo.  His narrative spans the drag for stray thoughts, subtly, slyly illuminated in some marginal reality, similar to ours, but slightly askew and neatly off the cuff.

Byrne takes to the road littered with strip malls, voodoo love shacks, karaoke-infused “wild lives,” evangelistic pop imagery.  A “green” family is outfitted in leaves for a mall fashion show.  The town’s local gossip-gal speaks earnestly about her tail, her alien abductions, and her fling with the real Rambo.  John Goodman is looking for love.  Spalding Gray works magic with a spinning lobster, and a sassy Swoosie Kurtz is fed by robots because she never leaves her bed. This of course, is just the prelude to another Talking Heads song. 

The iconic image of an 80s Byrne in a big suit is strangely representative of the feeling of True Stories.  The landscape is muted, ill-suited to reality, larger-than-life, shrouded in song, magical.  Nowadays, it’s essential that we ask the important questions, and if you’ve ever wondered why you run out of Kleenex, paper towels and toilet paper at the same time and considered a possible nation-wide conspiracy, Byrne may just have the answer.  Or perhaps he just asks the same questions, but he does it in harmony with full choir accompaniment.