Catherine, in several convenient locations

If you subscribe to Commonweal -- and for goodness's sake, why wouldn't you? You can get 6 months' worth for just $17! -- you can read my review of Don Brophy's biography Catherine of Siena: A Passionate Life in our latest issue. St. Catherine is one of my very favorite saints and has had my back for some time now, so I was delighted to get this assignment and pleased to be able to recommend the book. It was also nice to have a chance to complain about the prayer card I picked up at her tomb in Rome, which referred to her possessing "the particular privilege of virginity and of patience" but left out some of her more notable, less passive qualities.

I mention at the beginning of the review that Catherine's head is in Siena, along with a thumb, while her body lies in Rome. Turns out my inventory wasn't quite complete, as I noted in a follow-up blog post today at dotCommonweal. (You don't have to subscribe to read that.) Looks like I need to go to Venice!

Credits where credit is due

Whether or not you make it to Kathy Griffin's run on Broadway, I commend to you her Playbill bio, which you can read here (beginning with paragraph 3). Much of it falls under "trying too hard" or "anxious to let you know it's funny" -- compare and contrast with Eddie Izzard's understated joke-bio from Joe Egg -- but there are a few excellent lines. My favorite is this credit: "Neil LaBute's I Hate You But I Won't Say It Till It Can Do the Most Damage (Dead Whore)."

Goodbye, Liz

Not long ago -- perhaps on seeing the tab cover pictured here -- I said to the husband, "I wonder what tabloids like The National Enquirer will do once Elizabeth Taylor actually dies." They've been reporting from her supposed deathbed for so long that I'm pretty sure I first encountered Dame Liz in that context -- standing in line at the supermarket as a kid, noticing that this lady, whoever she was, was "near death" yet again. I guess now we will find out who takes her place. This graphic, by the way, comes from the Enquirer's website, where they are just giddy with the news: "As The ENQUIRER exclusively first reported Taylor's days were numbered when she was first rushed to the hospital six weeks ago." Yes, well, broken clocks.

Farewell, Dame Liz. I hope they're airing Dancing with the Stars wherever you are. (I note with some sadness her final tweet, from February 9: "My interview in Bazaar with Kim Kardashian came out!!!")

But seriously, folks, a tribute is in order. If you had to choose a Liz Taylor movie to watch this week, which would it be?

This is why Mom makes you eat the crust

I was always told eating the crust on my sandwich would make my hair curl, which turned out to be a lie. But apparently the crust has a more vital role: it protects your sandwich from "contamination."

'Jamwich' Crustless Sandwiches Recalled

SCRANTON - Giant grocery stores have removed "Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jamwich" crustless sandwiches, manufactured by Pierre Foods, from the shelves after being warned of possible contamination.

I saw that headline and fully expected the text of the article to read, "Obviously. Because they're disgusting." But the truth is much more sinister. You can return your Jamwiches to the Giant for a free refund. The only problem is you'll have to admit you bought them in the first place.

P.S. Reader challenge: Apparently they also sell these things in vending machines. How hungry would you have to be before you bought and ate one? Leave your nightmare scenarios in the comments!

Departing from the formula

I direct your attention to a fine "critiquing the critics" post over at dotCommonweal -- written by my colleague Paul Moses, who took issue with Ben Brantley's review of That Championship Season. Paul hasn't seen the production under review, and neither have I, but I think he's right to be surprised by Brantley's attack on the play itself. It's out of character for Brantley to strike this edgier-than-thou pose. I expect this sort of "I am not impressed by your award-winning play" sniffing from Isherwood (see here, for example), but Brantley? And reviewing a play with a bunch of movie stars in it? No women, sure, but still. Very odd.

I certainly won't dispute the observation that That Championship Season is marked by "formal old-fashionedness," nor that it "appears to have been assembled according to the rule book of Playwriting 101, 1952 edition." But I would suggest that this is by design. I'll just repeat what I said in my comment over at dotComm:

I often find that Brantley will make what strikes me as a keen observation, and then go on to draw exactly the opposite conclusion from it. This is a perfect example:

Though littered with four-letter words, “Season” has a clean, mechanical structure in which revelations arrive like well-run trains at a station. Theatergoers who felt hip enough to be lambasted for being middle-class sell-outs but not hip enough for the experimental ambiguities of an Albee play could sit back and enjoy American traditionalism being attacked in the traditional style to which they were accustomed.

He goes on to refer to the play’s “perverse comfort factor.” To me, what distinguishes the play is its discomfort factor — the combination of the old-fashioned, disciplined structure with increasingly unsettling revelations about American values, small-town pieties, and human nature. That’s exactly what he puts his finger on in the quote above, except that he gets the analysis backward. It seems to me the play is designed to let you get comfortable and then make you squirm.

Also: I haven’t seen this production, but I know the play well, and in my opinion this review contains unnecessary plot-spoilers. I guess Brantley figured no one who read it would want to see the show, so he might as well go ahead and ruin it?

Seriously: if you plan to see That Championship Season and you never have before, don't read Brantley's review. I hope to see it myself, so I'll stop there. Hey, maybe this will make tickets easier to come by?

(By the way, dotCommonweal is always a good place to look for me when things are quiet here! Check out what I've been posting lately.)

This Disney World attraction is a lot more amusing than I remembered

As we prepare celebrate Presidents Day, I hope you'll take this opportunity to reflect on our nation's long, proud, imaginary alternative history. Yes, there have been dark times. But for every Daniel Flintstone, there's a Liam F. Stitches all Americans can be proud of. (Via Wonkette.)

The "Shepherd Me, O God" investigation continues

In August I blogged about something I thought was strange: the use of Marty Haugen's tune for "Shepherd Me O God," his setting of the 23rd Psalm, as background music on multiple episodes of 48 Hours. No scandal broke as a result of my posting, but I'm following up anyway, because now I have evidence. Tonight I turned on an episode of 48 Hours: Hard Evidence (the repackaged reruns that air on Investigation Discovery) about 20 minutes in. Before long, there it was: "Shepherd Me, O God," playing completely incongruously in the background.

The episode is titled "Deep Secret." You can watch it on the CBS website. But for our purposes, just skip ahead to 41:18, and you'll hear it, played on a piano, verse and refrain. There are some embellishments, but it's unmistakably Haugen. (For comparison's sake: here's "Shepherd Me, O God.") If you watch to the end, you'll see lots of credits for outside footage, but no music credit aside from "Music composed by Richard Fiocca." (He wrote the theme music, according to his website -- which you shouldn't visit, unless you like websites that automatically play music and don't even have a mute button.)

So: what gives?

Loose rei[g]ns

I've noticed typos here and there in The New Yorker over the past year or so. At first I brushed aside the conclusion that things are getting looser over there; perhaps I'm just getting better at this, I thought. (You don't turn off the error-detecting software when you're out of the office.) I try not to freak out too much about the impending Death of Print Journalism, for obvious sanity-preserving reasons. But then, in the December 13 issue, two mistakes in the same article! This is alarming. Are there any full-time copy editors and proofreaders left at Conde Nast?

The article, for those of you playing along at home, was John Lahr's profile of Elia Kazan, "Method Man." On page 91, third column, a missing close-quote:

it was Kazan, newly promoted from stage manager to actor, who shouted the play’s famous last lines—“Strike! Strike!! Strike!!!—which became the battle cry of the thirties.

And on page 93, first column, the true mark of a copy editor asleep at the switch: homophone confusion!

Kazan’s straight talk cajoled, provoked, cudgelled; it kept Williams on narrative track and reigned in his lyrical excess.

And I was able to copy and paste both of those from The New Yorker's website, where they still haven't been corrected. O tempora! O mores!

Meanwhile, the December 20 & 27 issue is one of those double issues I spend half as much time reading. It feels like half the staff is already on vacation and the other half wishes they were. First of all, Ian Frazier is peerless and wonderful, but these lame "Cursing Mommy" pieces -- does anybody find them funny? And we also get a bonus not-funny "humor" piece, "Santaleaks" -- really? Also, am I the only one who noticed that the cartoons on page 54 and page 68 are the same joke? In both, someone is about to be executed. Page 54 caption: "His highness is changing his relationship status." Page 68 caption: "I'm about to enter an area of poor reception." (Technological phrases in incongruous settings, am I right?!) At least put them in different issues.

However, you will doubtless be pleased to know that this same issue has a feature article by our old friend John Colapinto. It is a work of breathtaking and unquestionable genius. I haven't read it. So time-saving to know I needn't bother! (P.S. If you haven't seen that old post, or it's been a while, you really ought to check it out again. The entertainment value never wanes.)

P.S. Speaking of works of genius, you can read my review of Gary Shteyngart's novel Super Sad True Love Story in the latest Commonweal -- but only if you subscribe.

In praise of women

I don't know about the summer night, but the gods were truly smiling on me the evening I went back to see A Little Night Music. I'd been putting it off, trying to come to terms with my mixed emotions. On one hand: Bernadette as Desiree! What could be more tantalizing? On the other hand: this thoroughly disappointing production! What I wouldn't give for a do-over. Erase the memory of this whole thing (especially Catherine Zeta-Jones's hilarious, horrifying Tony Awards performance) and start over, with a production custom-built for Bernadette and directed by, oh, anybody else. As they say, it would have been wonderful. Alas, that will never be; if I want to see Bernadette it's Nunn's Night Music or none at all.

Circumstances conspired to give me the best possible experience, and for that I'm very grateful (I only wish I could guarantee that you would have the same circumstances align for your trip -- and you'll have to hurry, because the show is closing January 9). First of all, unlike the last time -- when I got a rear mezzanine seat and paid too much for it -- I got a half-price center orchestra seat for a Tuesday-night performance, and was delighted to find the seats in front of mine unoccupied. Talk about an unrestricted view. When I entered the lobby I checked the "At this Performance" postings, holding my breath -- any time I have a ticket to see Bernadette, I arrive half-convinced it's too good to be true and she will not be appearing that day. But there were no understudies listed for Desiree or Madame Armfeldt, and -- oh happy day -- there was an understudy listed for Anne! I had quite literally been dreading seeing Ramona Mallory again, having found her performance "actively painful" the first time around, and fate had offered me a reprieve. I practically skipped to my seat.

It's an honor just to be nominated

Some years ago, while trying to pass long hours of downtime at a freelance copyediting job, I stumbled on The Comics Curmudgeon, a blog dedicated to one of my own favorite pursuits -- exposing and mocking the inexcusably low quality of many (most?) newspaper comics. I read my way through the archives that week, and I've been reading faithfully ever since. (I wrote about my joy here, and also here.)

One of the things I like about The Comics Curmudgeon are the cheerfully hilarious comments -- it's among the few blogs where the comments actually add value. (Although reading them can also be a chore, now that they routinely run into the hundreds on a given post.) Recognizing this, proprietor Josh began a "Comment of the Week" feature to call attention to particularly noteworthy contributions. I am proud to say I've been a runner-up a few times in the past (I boasted about one such occasion here; you can see a few examples here), but I've never taken the top honors until now. Behold, my day of glory.

Mark Trail, for those of you who don't know, is a comic strip about a park-ranger-type guy (or "well-known outdoorsman," although I believe his official profession is "nature journalist"). He goes around stumbling onto mildly nefarious plots to harm nature and busting them up, usually with his fists. The strip is the work of Jack Elrod, who is very good at drawing animals and not so great at drawing people, or writing stories or dialogue. His pursuit of the comic-strip form is pretty obviously just an excuse to draw some animals. As Josh has faithfully chronicled, Mark Trail himself seems to suffer from some kind of mental/social disorder; he speaks as though it pains him, yells for no reason, and interacts as little as possible with other human beings. Still, he has proven capable of great feats of heroism, and he knows a lot about nature, and licorice. (This recent strip is a perfect example of some of Mark Trail's most reliable tropes: bad guy kicking a helpless animal; Mark addressing the problem with his avenging fists; lots of shouting all around.) If it weren't for Josh I wouldn't even know Mark Trail existed, so this little triumph is a reminder of how very much richer my life has been these past few years. Thanks, Josh!