Since far too often we only publicly say nice things about people when they are dead I’ve decided to randomly pick a Facebook friend every day and say something nice about them.
June 30, 2019
Today’s person: Josh Kornbluth!
Josh and I periodically have gotten together for sudden hot chocolate in Berkeley.
I am always kinda astounded by this. Here’s this brilliant artist and social commentarian, astoundingly comedic film and theatre maker, thoughtful talk show having, always super smart and funny and compassionate and political Red Diaper Baby sitting across from me like he has no idea how geeky cool he is.
I can’t remember when I actually met Josh, but it was Velina’s idea to ask him to work on a Mime Troupe show. With all its ups and downs creating “Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan” was a fun ride, and gave me a peek inside the well-ordered chaos of his mind. I’m not just trying to turn a phrase with that, either. What I mean is that Josh is so smart, and has so many levels of possibilities at any moment, It’s like he’s is always playing multiple three dimensional comic chess games in his head, or he’s like the sword-wielding magician who throws a deck of cards, lunges, and seems to stab a particular card out of the air - only Josh is throwing our very human world into the air and stabbing it with his brain. What seems like seriously crooked chaos to us is a straight line of hilarious logic to Josh.
And I love his unabashed politics, his devotion to the cause of Us. His comic observations of his life and our world are openly subjective rather than falsely objective; he doesn’t leave you wondering what his opinion is so he can pat himself on the back with some artificial artistic distance. His unique view encompasses some part of all of us, and his open desire to make things better speaks to the best part of us.
That he does it with piercing comedy just makes it all so much better.
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