The week before British playwright Terry Johnson’s stage version of Charles Webb’s 1963 novella The Graduate and Buck Henry and Calder Willingham’s 1967 screenplay premiered at Laguna Playhouse, I happened to re-watch the classic movie on the IFC or Sundance Channel. I was struck by a number of things and wondered how could one translate its cinematic language to the medium of theatre, with real life movie star Melanie Griffith stepping into the role Anne Bancroft immortalized, that lecherous lush Mrs. Robinson?

After all, its helmer, Mike Nichols - who actually had previously been a theatre director whose movie debut was the 1966 adaptation of Edward Albee's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - won the Best Director Oscar for The Graduate, which was only his second movie. And it was lensed by legendary director of photography Robert Surtees, who won three Best Cinematography Oscars, including for 1959’s Ben-Hur, and was Oscar-nommed another dozen times, including for The Graduate.

I have to admit the moment that California Rapper Nipsy Hussle dropped his new “Victory Lap” I thought maybe I should roll up to the strip club, and get myself a lap dance during one of the days the dances are only 10 dollars.

Normally, I end up chatting with strippers saying, “I'm an artist-writer. This is part of my process. Don’t get me wrong. I like naked ladies. But I'm in the midst of studying a performance art piece.”

Nipsy Hussle would think what I just wrote doesn't fully address or consider the point of strip clubs. My point is that Nipsy Hussle’s new album is the first proper gangsta rap album since we've been burdened with our current president who seems to be a real killjoy.

Maybe not the first since the new regime, but still gangsta Nip gives us a little some-some we’ve been hesitant to embrace. Don't get me wrong. Nipsy isn't a fool. He and YG made “Fuck Donald Trump,” which was an anthem that got them maced by the police during the video shoot for YG's last record.

Victory Lap’s big single, “Rap N***as” is unabashed Above the Law, as in “Black Superman” meets “Broken Language.” 

The two most recently scheduled Ohio executions were not carried out, and it’s starting to look like a fair bet the next one won’t happen either. In November, a failed execution attempt ended with Alva Campbell returned to his cell. In January, a juror raised questions about information withheld during the sentencing of Raymond Tibbetts, prompting the governor to order a new clemency hearing. In April, Ohio plans the execution of a man who may actually be innocent.

William T. Montgomery has been on Ohio’s death row for over 31 years for the 1986 murders of Cynthia Tincher and Debra Ogle in Lucas County (Toledo). He has always maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest. This case features the classic hallmarks of wrongful convictions: jailhouse informant, prosecutorial misconduct, hidden exculpatory evidence and leniency to a co-defendant in exchange for testimony.

Did you know that in the first year of the Trump regime “anti-Semitic incidents” surged 57 percent, according the Anti-Defamation’s League (ADL) annual report. No Trump hyperbole, this was the single largest increase ever recorded by the ADL. Also on the rise are xenophobia, nativism, white supremacy, and neo-Nazism. In the most recent Associated Press poll, 57 percent of adults believe Trump’s a racist.

No one was incredibly surprised that Trump’s fan club, the neo-Nazi Patriot Front, was busy flyering down Indianola Avenue in Clintonville Monday, February 26 in broad daylight. Whenever local residents removed them, the flyers would soon reappear. The neo-Nazis have now flyered Clintonville four times in the last few months in addition to Hilliard, Worthington, Westerville, and Dublin. Clintonville activists and their allies made their values known with a large anti-racist demonstration Saturday, March 3, that drew about 60 people at the corner of North Broadway and High.

I will not begin this week by providing an overview of February. It was a month full of shootings and a disgraceful lack of interest from our national leaders. There is nothing more to say except every member of the legislative and executive branches should be filled with so much shame they do everything in their power to make March a profoundly superior month.

The fast-approaching midterm primaries and general elections are already taking their toll on the country’s progress. Discussions about real issues are at a minimum, and new legislation isn’t exactly flying through the Congress. Yet again, it is as though politicians are trying to prevent their opponents from gaining votes rather than earning them for themselves. This is a time when incumbents should be affecting positive change so they have a real record to run on. Challengers should be proposing grandiose, Earth-shattering plans to end generations of destruction and injustice. Instead, they are steering clear of everything remotely controversial and leaving far too much in a political no man’s land.