Private Practice recap: episode 3

Having trouble coping with Monday? Flash back to Wednesday with a brand-new recap!

In his office, Cooper examines Erin, taking care not to get her blotchy blue body paint on his ear thermometer. "Was she exposed to any water from a well or spring?" he asks. Mom says no. Cooper kneads his face in despair. "How about antibiotics?" Again, no. In the corner, the three other little girls, huddled in the armchair and clutching their dolls, put their heads together and whisper. "Quiet for Mommy. The doctor's thinking," says the woman, who apparently is the mother of all these little girls? All these very close-in-age, non-identical little girls? Are they quadruplets? Two sets of twins? Do they multiply when Mom's not looking? I don't know, but something about them creeps me out. Even the non-blue ones.

Will Cooper save the spooky little girls? Read the whole thing over at TWoP.

Oddly worded headline of the day award

Yahoo's homepage greeted me with this AP headline today:

"Ailing Myanmar Prime Minster Dead at 59."

Is it nitpicky to point out that one cannot be "ailing" and "dead" at the same time? I read that and a little Monty Python voice in my head said, "Perhaps he died while they were reporting it." That would be cutting-edge news reporting, wouldn't it? "Ailing Prime Minister Will, By the Time You Get to the End of This Sentence, Be Dead."

If it weren't for IMDb, we'd still be arguing

I can't remember how the fiance and I ended up talking about Helena Bonham Carter last night. We certainly weren't discussing the upcoming film version of Sweeney Todd, because I don't know how to feel about that, and in lieu of forming an opinion I've decided to simply pretend it's not happening. But somehow HBC* came up, and I said, "I think she's married to Tim Burton now."

HIM: No, Tim Burton is married to that other actress, isn't he?
ME: What other actress?
HIM: That weird woman who's in all his movies.
ME: Yeah, that's Helena Bonham Carter.
HIM: No it isn't.
ME: I'm pretty sure it is.

We turned to the internet, as we so often do, to settle this dispute. It turns out the fiance was thinking of Lisa Marie, Burton's onetime love (not wife, although they were engaged for nine years?) and the star of a string of his films; I guess she's the Oddball Burton Muse of his generation. I'd never heard of her, and he didn't realize HBC had become Burton's leading lady/romantic partner (in the interest of accuracy, I should point out that they're not married either). So we were both right! Sort of! I wonder where our relationship would be if we didn't have the internet to arbitrate in these matters?

I'd take this opportunity to brag about the time HBC sat down right in front of me at a play in London, but it seems I've already mentioned it. I will add that she was wearing a big flower in her hair -- as you might expect -- but she didn't do anything particularly kooky, which was disappointing. Didn't stop me from telling the "story" twice, though!

* Someone needs to add Helena Bonham Carter to this "disambiguation" on Wikipedia. Could that someone be you?

Comedy last night

Where have I been? Recapping, and working on an RCIA presentation on Scripture and Tradition in the Church. Highbrow, lowbrow, I try to mix it up.

Speaking of recaps: You guys, last night's Private Practice made me laugh! Multiple times! In an appreciative way rather than in a derisive way! Audra, in particular, had one line that made the fiance and me both laugh hard, and reach for the remote so we could see it again. So I'm feeling better about this show. Still not feeling the Pete-Addison flirting/fighting, though. We'll have less of that, if you don't mind, show. Anyway, you'll hear about it all in my forthcoming recap, but for now you can check out the recaplet if you're dying to know how the many medical plots resolved themselves.

Did you know you can watch episodes of this and other ABC series online, free of charge (as long as you're willing to put up with a handful of ads)? I'm not getting paid to tell you this or anything, but I felt it was worth mentioning. I've been finding it very useful in checking my work. Of course, if you have a real job and can't get away with actually watching television shows at your desk, TWoP recaps are there for you. Lately I've been enjoying Wing Chun and Miss Alli's weecaps of The Office very much.

In wedding news (since you're dying to know), I've completed the design, printing, and purchasing phases of the wedding invitation process and am now moving on to the assembly part. There are other, more pressing concerns I should be focusing on, but as you know, I'd rather be gluing. The craftily inclined might care to know that Kate's Paperie is having a big ol' ribbon sale. Never thought I'd see the day when Kate's would save me money!

Spell check

You don't often come across a musical that would be better off without its music. After all, what's the point of making something into a musical if the music isn't the best part (or at least a vital component of the whole)? Musicals with excellent scores and filmsy books are pretty easy to find; musicals whose books and scores are both poor-to-terrible are regrettably common; musicals whose scores and books are equally solid are precious, precious treasures. But the good book/lousy score combo is relatively rare. And it's one of the things that makes The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee such an oddity on Broadway.

Spelling Bee is not, of course, new on Broadway -- it competed at the Tony Awards in 2005, and won a few, including one for Rachel Sheinkin's book. (The show also has a "conceived by" credit, for Rachel Feldman, and an "additional material by" credit for Jay Weiss.) Since then it's been puttering along in the cozy Circle in the Square theatre, next door to Wicked, and I only just got around to seeing it last week. This may surprise those of you who know of my personal history as a middle-school spelling bee competitor -- people expected me to be first in line for this show when it opened on Broadway. It had good buzz! It was a musical! It was about a spelling bee! What's not to love? But I was in no hurry to buy a ticket, for the same reason Pee Wee Herman doesn't stick around to watch the movie based on his life at the end of Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I don't have to see it. I lived it.

Now that I have seen the show at last, I can confirm that the book deserved its Tony Award. It's funny, sharp and original, and it has the irresistible momentum of any spelling-based competition -- at least until the songs, by William Finn, interrupt. They're totally boring. Overthought, underwritten and so forgettable you can actually forget them while they're still happening. The show hums along, skipping lightly from joke to joke, held aloft by appealing performances, pulsing with spontaneity, and then a song starts and you can feel the energy drain from the audience. (In fact, from most seats you can actually watch people get restless, thanks to the shape of the theatre.)

When it's not singing, Spelling Bee works hard to win your heart. Even before you enter the theatre, the branding draws you in: the lobby is decorated like a high school cafeteria, with hand-lettered posters announcing meetings of various clubs and samples of kids' artwork. The thrust-stage theatre is set up to look like a middle-school gymnasium, complete with basketball hoop. It's all very endearing. And although the original cast is long gone, the current performers are a likable bunch. Finn's songs sounded best when performed by Jenny Barber, extremely winsome as Olive Ostrovsky, and Angelica-Lee Aspiras, understudying the role of Rona Lisa Peretti (the bee's host) at the performance I saw. Also terrific: Daniel Pearce, appealingly loose as vice-principal/bee pronouncer Douglas Panch, and Stanley Bahorek, utterly vivid and adorable as Leaf Coneybear (which is my favorite character name ever).

All this is very entertaining, but I'm not convinced it's more entertaining as a full-fledged Broadway show than it would have been (and probably was) in its original form, as an improv-based play. The show's best moments occur spontaneously, or are calculated to seem spontaneous -- it's disappointing to see the last audience member turned contestant leave the stage. The choreography seems made up on the spot, and I couldn't help thinking that I'd find the musical numbers far more interesting if I thought they actually were spontaneous creations. But aside from the moment, late in the show, when an understudy took an apparently underrehearsed turn at the piano and everyone onstage, including the conductor, struggled to stifle laughter, the songs evoked the one aspect of my spelling-bee experience I'd rather not relive: the long, dull stretches between my turns at the microphone, when I had to sit politely and find something for my brain to do. And so I was ready for the show to end long before it actually did (although my flagging interest was revived by the appearance of Jesus, offering words of wisdom I plan to take to heart). And as much as I appreciated Spelling Bee's intelligence and heart, I suspect I might have liked C-R-E-P-U-S-C-L-E better.

I mentioned the audience participation element of the show, and I should note that I did submit my name to be considered. I thought it might make for interesting blogging. I didn't tell them about my blog, of course, nor did I disclose my National Spelling Bee credentials, but I still wasn't chosen. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned copy-editing?

Private Practice recap: episode 2

New Private Practice recap is up at TWoP!

Cut to Cooper's office, where Addison is breaking the news to the O'Brien family. "Emily has a serious presentation of Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease," she tells them. The (still unspecified) symptoms can be treated with drugs, Cooper adds, but there's no cure, and Emily probably has about five years to live. That's the bad news. Nobody tells them the good news: they could become very well known and sought-after in the field of genetics, because according to the National Institutes of Health, Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease affects males almost exclusively. Of course, Addison, with her impossibly long list of credentials, has probably seen cases even the NIH doesn't know about.

Go on and read the whole thing.

Instead of, what, like a rented tux

The fiance and I made another quick trip to the Electric City yesterday! I wish I could blog from the car, because then I could give you a real-time wildlife update. On this trip, we saw: at least one dead deer, one unidentified gray furry dead thing, one dead porcupine (the first porcupine I ever saw!), and -- the most exciting part -- one live turtle making his way across a busy stretch of I-380. He was crossing the median when we whizzed by; you might have thought he was a shredded piece of truck tire, but it's pretty hard to slip a turtle past me. I turned around to look back at him, stupidly poking his neck out into oncoming traffic, but I quickly realized it was probably best not to watch. I can just tell myself he made it across safely. I mean, he got halfway...

Oh, and we also found ourselves passing through an intersection where, if you were heading toward the Elmhurst Country Club and made an erroneous right turn, you would drive directly into Lake Scranton. Just like a certain regional manager of a fictional paper company might have done on a certain popular television show the previous night.

We had to go to Scranton to discuss the details of our wedding reception -- and it's all details, and they never ever end. We also made a stop at the tuxedo rental place, where I got a good look at the differences in wedding-related marketing to men and women. There was no concern about finding the tuxedo the groom has always dreamed of. The tux salesman seemed surprised we even wanted to try on more than one jacket (do you call them jackets?). Like, why prolong this routine chore? It's not that he wasn't helpful -- he had good suggestions about what color cuff links would look best in photos and so on. But he didn't seem to think of himself as a retailer of dreams. Just, you know, tuxes. So that's the first not-surprising thing I learned. The second not-surprising thing I learned is that our decision not to include any of our many adorable nieces and nephews in our wedding party is a sound one. The pictures of small boys in tiny tuxedos are seductive, no question, but while we were in the store, at least two and possibly three little boys were brought in by their mothers to be fitted for ring-bearer outfits. I lost count, because they were all pretty much the same: miserable, uncooperative, whiny. And their mothers all looked equally pleased to be participating in some bride and groom's special day. My four-and-a-half-year-old nephew announced his intention to wear a tuxedo (which he calls, variously, a "muxebo," a "tuxemo," and "that black thing that [the fiance] has to wear") to the wedding almost as soon as he heard about our engagement, and he's welcome to, but we will not require it. Because his parents have better things to do with their lives, and also because kids look cute already. They don't need the formal wear to make them presentable and camera-ready. We do.

Oh, also, we picked out our cake. The cake was not something for which we'd budgeted much time or money, so we were very happy to get that over with in less than fifteen minutes. We think it will be both tasty and cute, but if it's not? Who cares. If you're looking at the cake, wedding guests, you're missing the party. I also discovered this Precious Moments cake-topper, which I guess is for couples who are planning a Disney theme but find the Cinderella and Mickey-and-Minnie merch too sophisticated. (And a bargain at $75! That's a memory you can keep forever!) I just needed you to know it's out there, because that way, no matter how short of our own vision we might fall, we will be able to say, At least we didn't put that on top of the cake.

Anyway, I'm back in the city now, moving ahead with wedding stuff while the fiance is off celebrating his bachelorhood. I've got a Broadway review coming up for you, and another Private Practice recap in the works, so stay tuned!

Yet another website where you can find me

Even my most dedicated fans (aka my "parents") might not know that I serve on the shadowy editorial staff of The Big Jewel -- the masthead was only recently updated, and I haven't contributed any of my own material to the site in quite a while. But the long wait is over! I have a new piece up today, entitled "Whole Foods, Half Truths" and inspired by the completely hilarious online adventures of a certain real-life supermarket CEO.

I owe credit to the fiance for tipping me off to this news story (and for having a WSJ account with which I could read it). Incidentally, this is my second Big Jewel piece to be inspired by real-life corporate fraud. The last one came about after I read an item in The Financial Times, which publication was delivered to my apartment for a three-week period during my first year in New York. It seems the actual subscriber and I had similar addresses -- my "River Rd." was on Roosevelt Island, and his was in the southern part of Manhattan Island. Our zip codes were different, and I called the FT subscription line at least twice to point this out, because I felt guilty, even though it's not like I set out to steal the guy's paper. They sorted things out eventually (or, at least, stopped sending the paper to me), but in the meantime I read it, because I have to read something while I'm eating my breakfast. So I guess the lesson here is that I should read financial newspapers more often. You just never know what will trigger your creative impulses.

Private Practice recap: episode 1

New recap is up, just in time to get you excited for tomorrow's show!

...Pete chooses this moment to ask Addison whether her moving to L.A. had anything to do with his kissing her. She denies this, of course, but his smugness is not reduced. “You should know it was just a kiss.” Addison’s all, Are we really having this conversation? “It was a good kiss,” Pete recalls. “It was an excellent kiss.” Addison feels that this assumption is “deranged,” and she tells him so. I say, Uh, guys: woman in labor, in case you forgot. And I think, Someone should probably tell Naomi that if she really wanted to run a clinic where “every patient gets our full attention,” it may have been a mistake to staff it with the most self-absorbed group of doctors south of Seattle.

Head on over to TWoP to read the whole thing.

My clever friend

Back in high school, I devoted many hours and many long Saturdays to the pursuit of speech-and-debate greatness. By my side for most of that time was my good friend Stephen, who competed with me (and routinely bested me) in the category of Original Oratory (specifically, "Persuasive Speaking"). Steve was an Original Orator to be reckoned with. In his free time, he kicked ass in Humorous Interp. And he made it all look easy. And the very best thing about all of Steve's many successes, in speech and debate and everything else he pursued, was that they very literally could not have happened to a nicer guy.

I mention all this because Stephen is now a playwright to be reckoned with, and his latest comedy is called Speech & Debate. It's being produced by Roundabout Theatre Company as the inaugural production in their new Roundabout Underground series. In speech and debate jargon, you might say Steve has broken to finals. And I can't wait to watch the round!

Previews start this weekend, and the show runs through December 16. And tickets are only $20! Go buy yours now!