Here's a fun time-wasting blog, for those days when Restricted View just isn't absorbing enough: Passive-Aggressive Notes. [Update: they've moved here.]
In my experience, "passive-aggressive" is an oft-misused label; people enjoy accusing others of "passive-aggressive" behavior in situations that fall well outside the purview of the actual definition, possibly because this sort of not-strictly-passive-aggressive-but-still-annoying behavior lends itself so well to complaining, and possibly because "passive-aggressive" is kind of fun to say. (The same goes for "anal-retentive.") I'm not sure all, or even most, of these notes would really qualify as "passive-aggressive." (The folks that run the blog are aware of this, to their credit.) But they're fun to read, because each pissy little Post-It tells a story, a saga of human behavior and misbehavior. Sometimes a tragic story; more often a farce; almost always a story with which you, the reader, can identify. Sometimes you identify with the note's recipient/target; more often, you identify with the person who left the note, or with the bystander who took the picture. For the past few weeks I've been mentally composing my own note, a list of "instructions for using the garbage chute," because some of my neighbors don't seem to realize that they shouldn't leave their garbage bag (or, more often, plastic grocery bag with the handles left untied) squatting behind the door, at the top of the chute, waiting for me to come along and give it a push. I don't want to touch your garbage, people. I don't even want to touch my own, but we all have to do things we don't like from time to time.
I probably won't actually write and post that note, or any of the others I compose in my head in response to similar annoyances. Not because it would be passive-aggressive (which it wouldn't; I think "bitchy" is more accurate), but because it probably wouldn't work, and then I'd just be more angry: not only are people ignoring the conventions of civilized society, now they're also ignoring my note! The nerve! So I'll just keep on blowing off steam here instead. Because, really, what is a blog, if not a series of (so-called) passive-aggressive notes?
P.S. I seem to be invoking Marian Paroo a lot lately -- I've always identified with her. And you just know she wrote scoldy notes to post around the library.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Friday, June 1, 2007
Ill Wind
The set of Doug Hughes's revival of Inherit the Wind is one big courtroom, and as the audience members take their seats (some onstage), a "gospel quartet" materializes in the courtroom's gallery and launches into a set of bluegrassy old-time-religion anthems. What seems, at first, to be mere whimsy turns out to be a perfect setup for Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's drama: the musicians perform with such competence and such enthusiasm that I began to wish I could spend my summers in the 1920s Bible Belt, wearing a sackcloth dress and playing songs about Jesus on a dulcimer. They got the crowd to stomp along to their rousing rendition of "Down by the Riverside" (just try not to sing along), and then, when we were all settled and feeling magnanimous, inclined to identify with these good and earnest people and, what's more, having just declared our intention to study war no more, the quartet launched into a spirited rendition of the unconvincingly lighthearted, alarmingly defensive "You Can't Make a Monkey out of Me."
The effect is deeply, and appropriately, unsettling -- you couldn't ask for a better curtain-warmer for this play. Unfortunately, Hughes squanders the richness of this opening once the play itself is underway. As it turns out, staging the entire play on a courtroom set isn't such an intelligent design after all (ha). The trial dominates the play, but there is more to the play than just the trial; there are a number of important non-courtroom scenes that feel cursory and peripheral in this staging, pushed as they are to the area in front of the judge's bench. Many of these scenes are meant to give us insight into the trial's major players -- the two lawyers, Brady and Drummond; Bert, the young teacher on trial for including Darwin in his high-school curriculum; the town's "spiritual leader," Rev. Brown, and his rebellious daughter, Rachel; and the people of Hillsboro in general. A truly intelligent staging, one interested in sustaining the dramatic ambiguity of this one's musical warm-up, would build on the script to help us see these characters as individuals, not easily compartmentalized and labeled, even when they themselves insist on the strictest of interpretations. Instead, Hughes seems bent on reducing the dimensionality of every character, or at least of those characters not on the side of truth (i.e., not obviously rooting for Drummond), even when the script is straining against it. So he has the townspeople appear onstage together in a drab, uniform block at the top of the show, and when two youngsters step forward to perform the scripted first scene -- which, on paper, is a cleverly intimate introduction of the play's big themes -- the whole thing feels false (and not just because one of those youngsters -- see the show and guess which one I mean -- is really quite a bad little actor, although I blame the director for that, too).
All of these wrong notes combine to make one noisy, dissonant chord out of the first act's "prayer meeting" scene. The townspeople, under Hughes's direction, act as one, shouting their "Amens" and engaging in a call-and-response with the Rev. Brown as if they were performing "Ya Got Trouble" by torchlight. The scene ought to show us what is at stake for the believers in the town (or, at least, what they think is at stake); it ought to make us see how their world is shaken by the issues raised in the trial, and why they might look to someone like Brown, with all his fire-and-brimstone certainty, for leadership. But here we see them, not as troubled individuals hoping for guidance, but as a uniform mob, gathered to frighten us, to make us root all the more for their ultimate defeat and humiliation. In this crowd, Rev. Brown doesn't stand out as the most rigidly fundamental; he just happens to be the one with the most lines.
The actors who make up the ensemble are, for the most part, doing their best to create fully realized characters, however little use Hughes might have for their contributions. Less impressive are Maggie Lacey and Ben Walker, as the young lovers supposedly at the center of this story; their Rachel and Cates have little personality and less chemistry, so who cares what happens to either of them? This isn't their story, anyway; in Hughes's hands, the only characters who matter are Brady and Drummond. And, with Brian Dennehy and Christopher Plummer in those roles, how bad can it be? I was seated in the front row (sure, my view was partially restricted, but who's complaining?), and once the music was over, the show's biggest thrill came from being so close to the legendary stars. That Brian Dennehy's characterization of Matthew Harrison Brady doesn't quite land is not really Dennehy's fault; he seems to be longing to show what lies behind that frozen grin of his, but the production, anxious to signal that its sympathies are with Cates and Drummond, is designed to cancel out any depth Dennehy might try to establish. This leaves Christopher Plummer's Drummond looking like the only three-dimensional figure in a field of cardboard cutouts -- with the possible exception of Denis O'Hare, as the newspaperman E.K. Hornbeck. It would be difficult not to find color in Hornbeck's poetic dialogue, but Hare brings so much personality to the stage you keep thinking he'll burst into song. (The man has had many Tony nominations already, but he really should have had another this year.)
I'd recommend that you read the play, but odds are you already have. And there's a reason for that. On the page, this play may be unfashionably lyrical, but it is also richer than this revival would have you believe. Take this exchange, from early in Act One:
The effect is deeply, and appropriately, unsettling -- you couldn't ask for a better curtain-warmer for this play. Unfortunately, Hughes squanders the richness of this opening once the play itself is underway. As it turns out, staging the entire play on a courtroom set isn't such an intelligent design after all (ha). The trial dominates the play, but there is more to the play than just the trial; there are a number of important non-courtroom scenes that feel cursory and peripheral in this staging, pushed as they are to the area in front of the judge's bench. Many of these scenes are meant to give us insight into the trial's major players -- the two lawyers, Brady and Drummond; Bert, the young teacher on trial for including Darwin in his high-school curriculum; the town's "spiritual leader," Rev. Brown, and his rebellious daughter, Rachel; and the people of Hillsboro in general. A truly intelligent staging, one interested in sustaining the dramatic ambiguity of this one's musical warm-up, would build on the script to help us see these characters as individuals, not easily compartmentalized and labeled, even when they themselves insist on the strictest of interpretations. Instead, Hughes seems bent on reducing the dimensionality of every character, or at least of those characters not on the side of truth (i.e., not obviously rooting for Drummond), even when the script is straining against it. So he has the townspeople appear onstage together in a drab, uniform block at the top of the show, and when two youngsters step forward to perform the scripted first scene -- which, on paper, is a cleverly intimate introduction of the play's big themes -- the whole thing feels false (and not just because one of those youngsters -- see the show and guess which one I mean -- is really quite a bad little actor, although I blame the director for that, too).
All of these wrong notes combine to make one noisy, dissonant chord out of the first act's "prayer meeting" scene. The townspeople, under Hughes's direction, act as one, shouting their "Amens" and engaging in a call-and-response with the Rev. Brown as if they were performing "Ya Got Trouble" by torchlight. The scene ought to show us what is at stake for the believers in the town (or, at least, what they think is at stake); it ought to make us see how their world is shaken by the issues raised in the trial, and why they might look to someone like Brown, with all his fire-and-brimstone certainty, for leadership. But here we see them, not as troubled individuals hoping for guidance, but as a uniform mob, gathered to frighten us, to make us root all the more for their ultimate defeat and humiliation. In this crowd, Rev. Brown doesn't stand out as the most rigidly fundamental; he just happens to be the one with the most lines.
The actors who make up the ensemble are, for the most part, doing their best to create fully realized characters, however little use Hughes might have for their contributions. Less impressive are Maggie Lacey and Ben Walker, as the young lovers supposedly at the center of this story; their Rachel and Cates have little personality and less chemistry, so who cares what happens to either of them? This isn't their story, anyway; in Hughes's hands, the only characters who matter are Brady and Drummond. And, with Brian Dennehy and Christopher Plummer in those roles, how bad can it be? I was seated in the front row (sure, my view was partially restricted, but who's complaining?), and once the music was over, the show's biggest thrill came from being so close to the legendary stars. That Brian Dennehy's characterization of Matthew Harrison Brady doesn't quite land is not really Dennehy's fault; he seems to be longing to show what lies behind that frozen grin of his, but the production, anxious to signal that its sympathies are with Cates and Drummond, is designed to cancel out any depth Dennehy might try to establish. This leaves Christopher Plummer's Drummond looking like the only three-dimensional figure in a field of cardboard cutouts -- with the possible exception of Denis O'Hare, as the newspaperman E.K. Hornbeck. It would be difficult not to find color in Hornbeck's poetic dialogue, but Hare brings so much personality to the stage you keep thinking he'll burst into song. (The man has had many Tony nominations already, but he really should have had another this year.)
I'd recommend that you read the play, but odds are you already have. And there's a reason for that. On the page, this play may be unfashionably lyrical, but it is also richer than this revival would have you believe. Take this exchange, from early in Act One:
RACHEL: Everybody says what you did is bad.Cates is right, of course; life isn't as simple as Rachel wants it to be. But the play is only dramatic because Rachel has a point, too, and it would have been nice to feel a little of the darkness she's talking about. Not "darkness" as in "fundamentalists are scary, and still among us in 2007!" but "darkness" as in "life is hard, and there are no easy answers." The thrill of the courtroom scene comes from its even-handedness; Brady takes a drubbing, sure, but he gives nearly as good as he gets. He knows his stuff (although the playwrighs stumble badly in having Brady declare that sex is "considered original sin"), and it's hard to blame Hillsboro's citizens for buying into his vision of bright daylight. But this production recasts the battle as the urbanites vs. the rednecks, and thus misses the opportunity to comment on, recontextualize, or even reflect contemporary American political discourse; in the end it only reflects the sort of thinking that led us to our regrettably polarized state. And Drummond's famous speech about progress and its price ("You may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell like gasoline"), even delivered masterfully by the great Christopher Plummer, has little impact here, because at no other point does the production ever intimate that embracing a six-month twilight has its own drawbacks.
CATES: It isn't as simple as that. Good or bad, black or white, night or day. Did you know, at the top of the world the twilight is six months long?
RACHEL: But we don't live at the top of the world. We live in Hillsboro, and when the sun goes down, it's dark.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
This is how 'irregardless' got into the dictionary
On Tuesday night, the fiance and I were enjoying the return, after a much-too-long hiatus, of one of our favorite TV shows, Supernanny. Why do we love this show so much? Is it the opportunity to judge others, and the pleasure of seeing bad parents chided and corrected? Is it the harrowing glimpse of what could be our future? Is it the blooper reel of children doing very cute things that runs during the closing credits? Or is it Jo? Oh, it's probably all of those things, but mostly, it's Jo. We love Jo. If you haven't had the pleasure of hearing Nanny Jo-Jo speak, you should know she has a fascinating English accent (working-class London, I think?), which makes it especially delicious to listen to her point out the errors made by clueless parents. Everything she says sounds simultaneously authoritative and whimsical, no-nonsense and musical. Like Mary Poppins. And after months with no new episodes, we were hanging on her every word -- Oh, Jo, it's so good to hear you adding a "K" sound to words that end in "ing," and punctuating your pronouncements by saying, "Full stop"! (E.g., "Tell her: For dinner, you can have this, or nuffink. Full stop.") You won't ever leave us, will you, Mary Poppins?
Anyway, I bring this up because, in this episode, Jo said something that made me laugh particularly hard. Scolding the clueless dad du jour for interfering with his wife's attempt to discipline their son, she said, "...You came in, and you underminded her."
Underminded? Granted, Jo is under a lot of pressure, so she's allowed to misspeak now and then. Plus, everything she says is awesome. But that's a dumb mistake, and I was surprised it made it into the final cut -- did ABC want her to look bad? Her point was a vital one, but couldn't they have shot it again, to give her a chance to say the word correctly? Or did the crew just assume "underminded" was a Britishism, like "whilst" or "aluminium"? (Jo doesn't have many opportunities to say "aluminium," but she does say "whilst" at least three times per episode, and I giggle each and every time. Whilst!)
I'd forgotten all about it until Wednesday evening, when I was flipping through the latest issue of New York magazine. Near the front (page 12 of the June 4 issue, if you're playing along at home) is a piece called "Penny-Pinching Peril," a flow chart/timeline of the major and minor disasters that have plagued the various Chinatown bus lines. And the deck (corrected on the website here, but cached incorrectly here) reads, in part: "But turf wars and safety problems... soon underminded the dream."
What are the odds I'd run across the same mistake twice in 2 days? And saying "underminded" out loud is one thing, but the second time, someone actually wrote it down! And then the copy editor (presumably New York has at least one copy editor) didn't fix it! What's going on here? Is this some sort of cultural reference, like that dark period in our recent past when magazines kept saying it was "hot in herrre"? Is "Underminded" the title of a new Gwen Stefani song or something? Or is it possible that some people actually think the infinitive form of this useful verb is "to undermind," rather than "to undermine"? Have you encountered this, my friends? Because I've always thought "undermine" was a pretty transparent, not to mention vivid, word. And this is kind of blowing my mind.
Anyway, I bring this up because, in this episode, Jo said something that made me laugh particularly hard. Scolding the clueless dad du jour for interfering with his wife's attempt to discipline their son, she said, "...You came in, and you underminded her."
Underminded? Granted, Jo is under a lot of pressure, so she's allowed to misspeak now and then. Plus, everything she says is awesome. But that's a dumb mistake, and I was surprised it made it into the final cut -- did ABC want her to look bad? Her point was a vital one, but couldn't they have shot it again, to give her a chance to say the word correctly? Or did the crew just assume "underminded" was a Britishism, like "whilst" or "aluminium"? (Jo doesn't have many opportunities to say "aluminium," but she does say "whilst" at least three times per episode, and I giggle each and every time. Whilst!)
I'd forgotten all about it until Wednesday evening, when I was flipping through the latest issue of New York magazine. Near the front (page 12 of the June 4 issue, if you're playing along at home) is a piece called "Penny-Pinching Peril," a flow chart/timeline of the major and minor disasters that have plagued the various Chinatown bus lines. And the deck (corrected on the website here, but cached incorrectly here) reads, in part: "But turf wars and safety problems... soon underminded the dream."
What are the odds I'd run across the same mistake twice in 2 days? And saying "underminded" out loud is one thing, but the second time, someone actually wrote it down! And then the copy editor (presumably New York has at least one copy editor) didn't fix it! What's going on here? Is this some sort of cultural reference, like that dark period in our recent past when magazines kept saying it was "hot in herrre"? Is "Underminded" the title of a new Gwen Stefani song or something? Or is it possible that some people actually think the infinitive form of this useful verb is "to undermind," rather than "to undermine"? Have you encountered this, my friends? Because I've always thought "undermine" was a pretty transparent, not to mention vivid, word. And this is kind of blowing my mind.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Boy for sale
When I saw Coram Boy on Saturday afternoon, I didn't know it was closing on Sunday. So that makes this review more of a post-mortem. But I won't let that stop me!
In 2001, when I was studying in London, I bought myself a ticket to see an acclaimed adaptation of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss that was temporarily installed in the West End. I went by myself, so I had nobody to elbow when Helena Bonham Carter sat down a few rows in front of me, and, worse, no one to process the experience with on the way home. And this was a show that begged to be discussed. When I think now of my favorite theatrical experiences, that show is always near the top of the list; it left me completely in awe of the power of theatre, and also made me anxious to reread the novel.
I recalled that experience as I watched the first act of Coram Boy -- not because this show was an unqualified thrill, which it wasn't, and not because it made me want to read the novel, which it didn't. But it had a similarly adventurous approach to the source material, with occasionally stirring results. As I've said before, I can't get too excited when a book I love is adapted as a film. But adapting a novel for the stage is a different animal. A film adaptation is necessarily literal and earthbound; it can show us the events of a novel, but it can rarely capture the experience of reading it, the literary qualities that make it worth reading in the first place. But a stage adaptation has more room for invention. It can get away with focusing narrowly on one aspect of the story, and leaving out other plot elements entirely. It can be figurative, it can use metaphor and imagery to get across a little of what the author accomplishes with language on the page. Coram Boy takes advantage of the possibilities of the stage, although not quite enough; it isn't quite great, but it is intermittently exciting. And so I wasn't surprised to discover, as I read my Playbill at intermission, that Helen Edmundson, who adapted The Mill on the Floss in that production I saw in London, adapted Coram Boy as well. (Even if I hadn't studied her bio, I guess the underwater scene in Act Two would have clued me in -- although, for the record, the underwater stuff in Mill was more spectacular, and far more organic.)
I haven't read Jamila Gavin's young adult novel, but I presume most of my problems with the show come directly from its pages. The adaptation might have benefited from a little less fidelity to its source, but when you're dealing with a text beloved of young people, you risk alienating your audience if you leave anything out. (Sample Amazon.com customer review quote, from "a 12-year-old reader": "I think this is an unbelievably awesome book.") Still, the show is heavy on plot and light on substance; all those characters and all those "twists" don't add up to anything much.
The story holds up pretty well through the first act, thanks to strong acting and efficient traffic-directing, but it can't bear the weight of all the new characters and plot twists introduced in the second. And things get progressively cheesier, though without any increase in the show's sense of humor -- I didn't care for Handel's cameo, and I grew tired of all the coincidences and "surprise" revelations (methinks "You thought so-and-so was dead, but he's actually alive!" should occur a maximum of one time per story). I wanted the plot to stand still long enough for me to get to know any of the characters I was supposed to care about, especially the lumbering simpleton Meshak. He should be the throughline that guide us through the thicket of plot, but his supposedly rich inner world never has a chance to fully manifest itself; he and his visions are always being crowded off the stage by the next plot point, and when he's onstage he always seems like a distraction rather than a focal point. With no clear idea of who Meshak is or what motivates him, it's difficult to care about, or even understand, what he does to move the story along, or to be moved by his fate.
Adding to the confusion: the cast of Coram Boy is enormous, even for a musical (and this is not a musical), but the cast of characters is greater still, and so there is much doubling. Which creates a problem when the second-act plot is full of secret-identity revelations, e.g., "This new character is actually a previously established character in disguise." In other words, sometimes it's significant that we're seeing a familiar actor in a new role, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you're supposed to notice, and sometimes you're not.
Still, I am not ready to dismiss Coram Boy as pointless, empty stagecraft, because it seems important, to me, that it is stagecraft -- as opposed to, say, imitation filmcraft. The story could hardly be called original, or nourishing, but the staging of that story is something to see, because it embraces the unique opportunities afforded by live theatre far more boldly than most big-budget shows dare. I was impressed by the gleeful theatricality of it: the locations not literally rendered, like the dungeon beneath the second-act villain's house, leaving room for the actors to provoke our imaginations. The events graphically staged -- the slinging about of dead babies, the smothering of not-quite-dead babies, the hanging of the villain, the frantic copulating of a pair of teenagers -- that kept taking me by surprise, as I would have expected such things to occur safely offstage, not just in a show for young people, but in any show. The decision to do all of that in full view of the audience was provocative, and a bold choice considering that it limited the potential audience (for the curious, the creators discuss their decision here). And then there's the casting of women as little boys, which works surprisingly well. If the stage were full of actual children, even extremely talented ones, the show would likely have been overwhelmed by the Star Search effect that performing children often have, where a small part of your brain is always thinking, "Wow, look at that kid up there, acting/singing/dancing, I wonder how old he is," etc. Knowing the actors are not really children leaves us to focus on the characters they're playing (at least once we get past the initial curiosity of knowing that they're women).
That casting trick would not be successful, of course, without strong performers, and this show has them in spades. I went in ready to examine the show in light of its Tony nominations, and I found both Xanthe Elbrick and Jan Maxwell very deserving of their "Featured Actress" nods (although, if Xanthe Elbrick isn't the lead in this show, who is?). I don't think a "Featured Actor" nod for Bill Camp would have been amiss, either; he made the sinister villain figure seem fresh while remaining faithful to the type. And many other ensemble members -- in particular Charlotte Parry, Cristin Milioti and Laura Heisler -- managed to create vivid characters who stood out from the visual confusion on the stage.
But there's only so much the actors can do in a rush, and they couldn't make me care about the second-act friendship between Aaron and Toby, or Toby's quest for his mother, or Melissa and Alexander's ostensibly passionate bond. Nothing could make me believe that Melissa managed to carry a baby to term without anyone realizing she was pregnant. The Ashbrook family reunion, which ought to have been an emotional high point of Act Two, was hurried past to get to the big action, and the slave-ship setting of the play's final scenes was barely justified.
As for the music that runs throughout this non-musical, too little creativity went into its use, and too little attention is paid to its religious themes and motivations. I thought my eyes would roll out of my head when the onstage chorus launched into an ominous, minor-key rendition of "For unto us a child is born..." as Melissa labored (on her knees, for some reason) to produce her poor bastard puppet-baby. As ludicrous as it would have been to suggest that this child was some sort of Christ figure, it seemed even more ridiculous to me that the creators wouldn't realize, acknowledge or care that the "child" mentioned in that piece of music is Christ.
As has been said before, Coram Boy was a great big expensive mess. But it was at times a fascinating mess. The few who had a chance to see it may have left perplexed and/or unmoved by the story, but I'm sure they also left discussing the staging, and I'm sorry more people won't have the chance to take it in.
In 2001, when I was studying in London, I bought myself a ticket to see an acclaimed adaptation of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss that was temporarily installed in the West End. I went by myself, so I had nobody to elbow when Helena Bonham Carter sat down a few rows in front of me, and, worse, no one to process the experience with on the way home. And this was a show that begged to be discussed. When I think now of my favorite theatrical experiences, that show is always near the top of the list; it left me completely in awe of the power of theatre, and also made me anxious to reread the novel.
I recalled that experience as I watched the first act of Coram Boy -- not because this show was an unqualified thrill, which it wasn't, and not because it made me want to read the novel, which it didn't. But it had a similarly adventurous approach to the source material, with occasionally stirring results. As I've said before, I can't get too excited when a book I love is adapted as a film. But adapting a novel for the stage is a different animal. A film adaptation is necessarily literal and earthbound; it can show us the events of a novel, but it can rarely capture the experience of reading it, the literary qualities that make it worth reading in the first place. But a stage adaptation has more room for invention. It can get away with focusing narrowly on one aspect of the story, and leaving out other plot elements entirely. It can be figurative, it can use metaphor and imagery to get across a little of what the author accomplishes with language on the page. Coram Boy takes advantage of the possibilities of the stage, although not quite enough; it isn't quite great, but it is intermittently exciting. And so I wasn't surprised to discover, as I read my Playbill at intermission, that Helen Edmundson, who adapted The Mill on the Floss in that production I saw in London, adapted Coram Boy as well. (Even if I hadn't studied her bio, I guess the underwater scene in Act Two would have clued me in -- although, for the record, the underwater stuff in Mill was more spectacular, and far more organic.)
I haven't read Jamila Gavin's young adult novel, but I presume most of my problems with the show come directly from its pages. The adaptation might have benefited from a little less fidelity to its source, but when you're dealing with a text beloved of young people, you risk alienating your audience if you leave anything out. (Sample Amazon.com customer review quote, from "a 12-year-old reader": "I think this is an unbelievably awesome book.") Still, the show is heavy on plot and light on substance; all those characters and all those "twists" don't add up to anything much.
The story holds up pretty well through the first act, thanks to strong acting and efficient traffic-directing, but it can't bear the weight of all the new characters and plot twists introduced in the second. And things get progressively cheesier, though without any increase in the show's sense of humor -- I didn't care for Handel's cameo, and I grew tired of all the coincidences and "surprise" revelations (methinks "You thought so-and-so was dead, but he's actually alive!" should occur a maximum of one time per story). I wanted the plot to stand still long enough for me to get to know any of the characters I was supposed to care about, especially the lumbering simpleton Meshak. He should be the throughline that guide us through the thicket of plot, but his supposedly rich inner world never has a chance to fully manifest itself; he and his visions are always being crowded off the stage by the next plot point, and when he's onstage he always seems like a distraction rather than a focal point. With no clear idea of who Meshak is or what motivates him, it's difficult to care about, or even understand, what he does to move the story along, or to be moved by his fate.
Adding to the confusion: the cast of Coram Boy is enormous, even for a musical (and this is not a musical), but the cast of characters is greater still, and so there is much doubling. Which creates a problem when the second-act plot is full of secret-identity revelations, e.g., "This new character is actually a previously established character in disguise." In other words, sometimes it's significant that we're seeing a familiar actor in a new role, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you're supposed to notice, and sometimes you're not.
Still, I am not ready to dismiss Coram Boy as pointless, empty stagecraft, because it seems important, to me, that it is stagecraft -- as opposed to, say, imitation filmcraft. The story could hardly be called original, or nourishing, but the staging of that story is something to see, because it embraces the unique opportunities afforded by live theatre far more boldly than most big-budget shows dare. I was impressed by the gleeful theatricality of it: the locations not literally rendered, like the dungeon beneath the second-act villain's house, leaving room for the actors to provoke our imaginations. The events graphically staged -- the slinging about of dead babies, the smothering of not-quite-dead babies, the hanging of the villain, the frantic copulating of a pair of teenagers -- that kept taking me by surprise, as I would have expected such things to occur safely offstage, not just in a show for young people, but in any show. The decision to do all of that in full view of the audience was provocative, and a bold choice considering that it limited the potential audience (for the curious, the creators discuss their decision here). And then there's the casting of women as little boys, which works surprisingly well. If the stage were full of actual children, even extremely talented ones, the show would likely have been overwhelmed by the Star Search effect that performing children often have, where a small part of your brain is always thinking, "Wow, look at that kid up there, acting/singing/dancing, I wonder how old he is," etc. Knowing the actors are not really children leaves us to focus on the characters they're playing (at least once we get past the initial curiosity of knowing that they're women).
That casting trick would not be successful, of course, without strong performers, and this show has them in spades. I went in ready to examine the show in light of its Tony nominations, and I found both Xanthe Elbrick and Jan Maxwell very deserving of their "Featured Actress" nods (although, if Xanthe Elbrick isn't the lead in this show, who is?). I don't think a "Featured Actor" nod for Bill Camp would have been amiss, either; he made the sinister villain figure seem fresh while remaining faithful to the type. And many other ensemble members -- in particular Charlotte Parry, Cristin Milioti and Laura Heisler -- managed to create vivid characters who stood out from the visual confusion on the stage.
But there's only so much the actors can do in a rush, and they couldn't make me care about the second-act friendship between Aaron and Toby, or Toby's quest for his mother, or Melissa and Alexander's ostensibly passionate bond. Nothing could make me believe that Melissa managed to carry a baby to term without anyone realizing she was pregnant. The Ashbrook family reunion, which ought to have been an emotional high point of Act Two, was hurried past to get to the big action, and the slave-ship setting of the play's final scenes was barely justified.
As for the music that runs throughout this non-musical, too little creativity went into its use, and too little attention is paid to its religious themes and motivations. I thought my eyes would roll out of my head when the onstage chorus launched into an ominous, minor-key rendition of "For unto us a child is born..." as Melissa labored (on her knees, for some reason) to produce her poor bastard puppet-baby. As ludicrous as it would have been to suggest that this child was some sort of Christ figure, it seemed even more ridiculous to me that the creators wouldn't realize, acknowledge or care that the "child" mentioned in that piece of music is Christ.
As has been said before, Coram Boy was a great big expensive mess. But it was at times a fascinating mess. The few who had a chance to see it may have left perplexed and/or unmoved by the story, but I'm sure they also left discussing the staging, and I'm sorry more people won't have the chance to take it in.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Will you still need me?
I managed to work some solid theatregoing into my holiday weekend, so watch this space for my reviews of Coram Boy and Inherit the Wind.
For today, just a note of admiration for the title of Paul McCartney's new album, Memory Almost Full. It's clever and fun, endearingly self-mocking; it acknowledges his age by making a very of-the-moment reference, which is a neat trick indeed. And it demonstrates a level of self-awareness that has been noticeably absent from his public and private conduct these last few years. (Speaking of which, I can't decide whether the black-and-white Robert Freeman-esque photos of the artificially dark-haired Macca are canny, or just sad.) It makes me think, Perhaps he hasn't completely lost his mind after all! And it makes me want to buy the album... almost. But I can't quite shake the suspicion that the title is probably the best thing about it. (Especially having visited the site. Yikes. Now, where did I put my copy of Red Rose Speedway?)
For today, just a note of admiration for the title of Paul McCartney's new album, Memory Almost Full. It's clever and fun, endearingly self-mocking; it acknowledges his age by making a very of-the-moment reference, which is a neat trick indeed. And it demonstrates a level of self-awareness that has been noticeably absent from his public and private conduct these last few years. (Speaking of which, I can't decide whether the black-and-white Robert Freeman-esque photos of the artificially dark-haired Macca are canny, or just sad.) It makes me think, Perhaps he hasn't completely lost his mind after all! And it makes me want to buy the album... almost. But I can't quite shake the suspicion that the title is probably the best thing about it. (Especially having visited the site. Yikes. Now, where did I put my copy of Red Rose Speedway?)
Friday, May 25, 2007
A helluva town
The exterminator took a look through my gruesome collection of mounted buggies and said, "None of these are bedbugs." He didn't know what some of them were, and he couldn't say what might have bitten me last week, but he did give me hope. Maybe I don't have bedbugs after all! Maybe this has all been an exercise in pointless paranoia! Or a sort of emergency drill. Or just a good opportunity to clean and declutter (I bagged and tossed a lot of things that I would probably have had difficulty getting rid of under less dire circumstances). Maybe I will soon be able to return to normalcy, aside from the lasting psychological damage that this episode has caused!
The NYT has an interesting article about a multimedia exhibit at Grand Central Terminal that runs through June. The article mentions a number of classic films (including The Clock) set in NYC that have informed, and continue to inform, the way Americans imagine and experience the city. I can name a few others that the article doesn't mention: I think of The Apartment whenever I'm in a big, impersonal office building, or on a side street in the West 60s, even though not much of it takes place outdoors. And every time I pass Macy's, or drive through Columbus Circle, I think of It Should Happen to You. And A Thousand Clowns found some great locations in Central Park that I didn't even know about!
My personal impression of New York (and Manhattan in particular) was mainly shaped by the two early-1980s movies my sister and I used to rent at Electric City Video every time our parents went out for the evening: Annie and The Muppets Take Manhattan. Whenever I'm looking for an address in Midtown, I think of that scene in Annie where the orphans arrive at "Number 1 Fifth Avenue!" and then realize they have to go all the way to [a very high number]. Which they do, because they're just that plucky. And the Muppets' adventures taught me to regard Manhattan (wherever that was) as a fantastical place, full of colorful Greek restaurateurs and catcalling construction workers and imperious Broadway producers and smug advertising executives and muggers on roller skates. And rats. Pretty accurate, in other words. (Current New Yorkers can catch it this week at midnight at Landmark Sunshine Cinema!)
So I ask you: what's your favorite New York film? What movie makes you want to come here, or makes you glad you are here? (Or makes you want to stay away? That Gregory-Hines-on-skates scene is pretty intense. NYC was rough in the early 80s.) Please share with the class.
The NYT has an interesting article about a multimedia exhibit at Grand Central Terminal that runs through June. The article mentions a number of classic films (including The Clock) set in NYC that have informed, and continue to inform, the way Americans imagine and experience the city. I can name a few others that the article doesn't mention: I think of The Apartment whenever I'm in a big, impersonal office building, or on a side street in the West 60s, even though not much of it takes place outdoors. And every time I pass Macy's, or drive through Columbus Circle, I think of It Should Happen to You. And A Thousand Clowns found some great locations in Central Park that I didn't even know about!
My personal impression of New York (and Manhattan in particular) was mainly shaped by the two early-1980s movies my sister and I used to rent at Electric City Video every time our parents went out for the evening: Annie and The Muppets Take Manhattan. Whenever I'm looking for an address in Midtown, I think of that scene in Annie where the orphans arrive at "Number 1 Fifth Avenue!" and then realize they have to go all the way to [a very high number]. Which they do, because they're just that plucky. And the Muppets' adventures taught me to regard Manhattan (wherever that was) as a fantastical place, full of colorful Greek restaurateurs and catcalling construction workers and imperious Broadway producers and smug advertising executives and muggers on roller skates. And rats. Pretty accurate, in other words. (Current New Yorkers can catch it this week at midnight at Landmark Sunshine Cinema!)
So I ask you: what's your favorite New York film? What movie makes you want to come here, or makes you glad you are here? (Or makes you want to stay away? That Gregory-Hines-on-skates scene is pretty intense. NYC was rough in the early 80s.) Please share with the class.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
...but I'm never gonna get lumbered again
Blogging is not the only thing I haven't been doing this week. I notified my building management of my suspected bedbug problem last Thursday, and they told me I'd just missed the exterminator, but they'd add me to his list for next week (today). So I've spent the whole week preparing for his arrival. As I've been cleaning and laundering, I've kept an eye out for bugs or evidence thereof, and anything I've found I've preserved carefully in packing tape for his inspection. I now have a small and ugly collection of specimens, but not a single textbook bedbug among them, so I'm quite interested in getting a professional verdict.
Oh, how I long for the days when I didn't automatically inspect my surroundings for vermin and pests. Those young and innocent days when I didn't freak out over every fuzzy speck on my comforter and tiny imperfection in my hardwood flooring. To aid me in making the "bug or dirt?" determination, I purchased a "Lighting Magnifying Glass" at the hardware store on the corner. They had only one magnifying glass in the place, and it was behind the counter, so I didn't take much time to look at it before they rang it up. I was just happy not to have to make another stop, since I had a bathroom to clean. But if I had looked at the packaging, for even a moment, I would have known better than to spend money on it, because it is, as Ali G might say, a bit crap. It was manufactured in China by a company called "Hakka," and for some reason the image on the box shows kaleidoscopic distortion rather than magnification. Along the side is this list of "Features":
Fashionable it may be, but effective it is not. Ah well, with the way I've been spending money this week (on Ziploc bags, laundry, dry cleaning, plastic tubs, cleaning supplies), what's another $7.99?
So that's what I've been doing this week. Here's what I have not been doing: blogging, reading, writing, reading other people's blogs, wasting time on the internet generally, eating lunch, seeing friends, going to the theatre, planning for my wedding, sitting on my bed, watching TV, getting my hair cut, breathing normally. Oh, or listening to CDs, because my crappy Memorex stereo chose this week to stop playing CDs. And it never really played cassettes well. So now all it can do is play the radio -- and WNYC was doing a pledge drive! Arrgh! However, I actually have been sleeping pretty well, because I haven't had any new bites all week. So that seems like a good sign, and here's hoping my nightmare will soon be over.
Oh, how I long for the days when I didn't automatically inspect my surroundings for vermin and pests. Those young and innocent days when I didn't freak out over every fuzzy speck on my comforter and tiny imperfection in my hardwood flooring. To aid me in making the "bug or dirt?" determination, I purchased a "Lighting Magnifying Glass" at the hardware store on the corner. They had only one magnifying glass in the place, and it was behind the counter, so I didn't take much time to look at it before they rang it up. I was just happy not to have to make another stop, since I had a bathroom to clean. But if I had looked at the packaging, for even a moment, I would have known better than to spend money on it, because it is, as Ali G might say, a bit crap. It was manufactured in China by a company called "Hakka," and for some reason the image on the box shows kaleidoscopic distortion rather than magnification. Along the side is this list of "Features":
- 2 or 5 magnification .
- Hi-bright spotlight.
- Very easily to change battery.
- Very fashionable design.
Fashionable it may be, but effective it is not. Ah well, with the way I've been spending money this week (on Ziploc bags, laundry, dry cleaning, plastic tubs, cleaning supplies), what's another $7.99?
So that's what I've been doing this week. Here's what I have not been doing: blogging, reading, writing, reading other people's blogs, wasting time on the internet generally, eating lunch, seeing friends, going to the theatre, planning for my wedding, sitting on my bed, watching TV, getting my hair cut, breathing normally. Oh, or listening to CDs, because my crappy Memorex stereo chose this week to stop playing CDs. And it never really played cassettes well. So now all it can do is play the radio -- and WNYC was doing a pledge drive! Arrgh! However, I actually have been sleeping pretty well, because I haven't had any new bites all week. So that seems like a good sign, and here's hoping my nightmare will soon be over.
Monday, May 21, 2007
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
If you're a New Yorker, you probably remember a recent spate of articles in the local press about bedbugs, the city's newest plague. Up until about two years ago, when I read my first frightening story on this topic, I assumed "bedbugs" were a made-up thing. But, in fact, they are real, and if media acccounts are to be believed, they are really hard to get rid of. After a while I made myself stop reading those stories, because I didn't want to get too paranoid. I already have my hands full managing my concerns about ATM-related scamming and insecure sidewalk grates; I can't take on another everyday-danger worry.
Well, it turns out it's a good thing I read at least a few of those stories, because if I hadn't it might have taken me months more to realize that I have my very own bedbug problem (or so I've concluded; the evidence is scant but suitably alarming). I got home one night last week and settled in for some email-writing and TV-watching, and to get myself in the lounging mood, I pulled my pajama pants out from under my pillow and put them on. Fifteen minutes later, I was scratching my knee and wondering, How on earth did I manage to get a mosquito bite today? Fast-forward to later that night, when I put on the rest of my jammies and climbed into bed to read... and discovered a couple more itchy bites on my arm by the time I was ready to turn out the light. Ruh-roh.
I don't know what people did in situations like this before they had the internet to answer all their questions. I spent the next day doing a lot of online research, and I've spent all my free time since then applying what I learned. The infestation seems to be small, and relatively under control, but I am anxiously awaiting the exterminator's visit on Thursday, and turning the apartment upside-down in the meantime. I'm trying to embrace this as an opportunity to de-clutter -- there's no room for sentimentality when your blood, not to mention your mental health, is on the line, and after all, I have to trim my belongings sooner or later. But even de-cluttering is more complicated than it sounds, since you can't just toss a potentially infested item in the trash. So much cleaning is in order. Bugs or no bugs, my apartment can certainly stand a thorough cleaning -- but it's very difficult to accomplish in such a tiny space (you are familiar with those boxes tissues come in, right? The smaller, square ones, I mean, not the spacious rectangular ones), which is why I haven't ever done it in the first place. So now I'm vacuuming, scrubbing, and facing the daunting task of washing all (and I mean all) of my clothing and bedding in hot water and drying it all on high heat to kill any lurking bugs, and then bagging each item individually to protect it from reinfestation. I am a neat and orderly kind of person, and there is something oddly satisfying about sealing all my socks, shirts, etc. in Ziploc bags... but the novelty wears off after a few loads. Especially considering how many quarters I've had to scare up, and how small and inadequate my building's laundry room is, and how depressing it is to allow hot water to rob all my brightly-colored clothing of its personality. Oh, and I am not sleeping all that well, for obvious reasons.
In the midst of all this, I find myself wondering: Haven't I been through enough?
Speaking of which, I had my six-month post-treatment checkup today, and I am still cancer-free! I was too busy losing sleep over the aforementioned plague to worry much about this morning's scan, but I am glad I have good news to cheer me up. Have a cupcake in my honor, and please be patient with me if blogging continues to be light... I'm hoping Restricted View HQ will be free from the curse very soon!
Well, it turns out it's a good thing I read at least a few of those stories, because if I hadn't it might have taken me months more to realize that I have my very own bedbug problem (or so I've concluded; the evidence is scant but suitably alarming). I got home one night last week and settled in for some email-writing and TV-watching, and to get myself in the lounging mood, I pulled my pajama pants out from under my pillow and put them on. Fifteen minutes later, I was scratching my knee and wondering, How on earth did I manage to get a mosquito bite today? Fast-forward to later that night, when I put on the rest of my jammies and climbed into bed to read... and discovered a couple more itchy bites on my arm by the time I was ready to turn out the light. Ruh-roh.
I don't know what people did in situations like this before they had the internet to answer all their questions. I spent the next day doing a lot of online research, and I've spent all my free time since then applying what I learned. The infestation seems to be small, and relatively under control, but I am anxiously awaiting the exterminator's visit on Thursday, and turning the apartment upside-down in the meantime. I'm trying to embrace this as an opportunity to de-clutter -- there's no room for sentimentality when your blood, not to mention your mental health, is on the line, and after all, I have to trim my belongings sooner or later. But even de-cluttering is more complicated than it sounds, since you can't just toss a potentially infested item in the trash. So much cleaning is in order. Bugs or no bugs, my apartment can certainly stand a thorough cleaning -- but it's very difficult to accomplish in such a tiny space (you are familiar with those boxes tissues come in, right? The smaller, square ones, I mean, not the spacious rectangular ones), which is why I haven't ever done it in the first place. So now I'm vacuuming, scrubbing, and facing the daunting task of washing all (and I mean all) of my clothing and bedding in hot water and drying it all on high heat to kill any lurking bugs, and then bagging each item individually to protect it from reinfestation. I am a neat and orderly kind of person, and there is something oddly satisfying about sealing all my socks, shirts, etc. in Ziploc bags... but the novelty wears off after a few loads. Especially considering how many quarters I've had to scare up, and how small and inadequate my building's laundry room is, and how depressing it is to allow hot water to rob all my brightly-colored clothing of its personality. Oh, and I am not sleeping all that well, for obvious reasons.
In the midst of all this, I find myself wondering: Haven't I been through enough?
Speaking of which, I had my six-month post-treatment checkup today, and I am still cancer-free! I was too busy losing sleep over the aforementioned plague to worry much about this morning's scan, but I am glad I have good news to cheer me up. Have a cupcake in my honor, and please be patient with me if blogging continues to be light... I'm hoping Restricted View HQ will be free from the curse very soon!
Friday, May 18, 2007
I know what the gentleman wanted.
Yesterday I was heading into the main terminal at Grand Central Station, dressed for success, as I was on my way to New Haven to speak at the LifeTales reception. A man (thirty-something black guy, nice-looking, wearing a suit) stopped me and said: "Excuse me... Do you know if they made an announcement that Your Majesty would be here today wearing that beautiful dress?"
Didn't see that coming, did you? Neither did I, which is my excuse for not coming up with a snappy comeback. (I wish I could have seen the expression on my face -- I just said, "No..." and walked off, aloof as Marian Paroo, or so I hoped.) But seriously, what is the appropriate response here? I don't even know what the intended effect could possibly be. I suppose he gets points for creativity -- it beats "Hey baby, nice rack" -- but if you're going to hit on some random woman, why the false pretenses? Does throwing her off her game like that really increase your odds? Or was this guy just the verbal equivalent of a flasher? "Excuse me, I'm just asking you for directions OH NOW I'M COMMENTING ON YOUR LOOKS!" You thought I wasn't going to objectify you but guess what I am!
I would have assumed this was some sort of fraternity hazing stunt, except that the guy was too old, and he was far too well-dressed for a panhandler. And he looked like he should have known better, generally. But perhaps taking people by surprise is how this guy gets his kicks (although in that case, I would expect the "surprise" part of the sentence to be more crude and less fanciful). I wonder if he goes to bars and does the opposite? "Hey, baby, I've been watching you from over there all night, and I just had to ask... do you know whether the 2-3 is running express this weekend?"
I was meeting the fiance shortly thereafter, and I couldn't wait to tell him this story, but it took me a long time to manage it, because I started laughing every time I got to the "Your Majesty" part. (That guy must have rehearsed a lot to keep such a straight face.) And later that evening, I received a few genuine compliments on my dress (which is pretty, if I do say so myself, though not especially regal) from kind older ladies, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Or from saying, "Please, please: you may address me as 'Your Majesty.'" I have decided that I will now refer to that dress as "my imperial robes" or "my coronation gown" (e.g., "I'm glad my coronation gown is machine washable, because I have to wear it again next week"). And I have a feeling the fiance and I will be trying to ambush each other with hilariously convoluted compliments for months to come. "Did you already send in that deposit to the photographer, or should I do it right after I finish admiring how nice you look with your new haircut?" It's totally fun. Submit your ideas below!
Didn't see that coming, did you? Neither did I, which is my excuse for not coming up with a snappy comeback. (I wish I could have seen the expression on my face -- I just said, "No..." and walked off, aloof as Marian Paroo, or so I hoped.) But seriously, what is the appropriate response here? I don't even know what the intended effect could possibly be. I suppose he gets points for creativity -- it beats "Hey baby, nice rack" -- but if you're going to hit on some random woman, why the false pretenses? Does throwing her off her game like that really increase your odds? Or was this guy just the verbal equivalent of a flasher? "Excuse me, I'm just asking you for directions OH NOW I'M COMMENTING ON YOUR LOOKS!" You thought I wasn't going to objectify you but guess what I am!
I would have assumed this was some sort of fraternity hazing stunt, except that the guy was too old, and he was far too well-dressed for a panhandler. And he looked like he should have known better, generally. But perhaps taking people by surprise is how this guy gets his kicks (although in that case, I would expect the "surprise" part of the sentence to be more crude and less fanciful). I wonder if he goes to bars and does the opposite? "Hey, baby, I've been watching you from over there all night, and I just had to ask... do you know whether the 2-3 is running express this weekend?"
I was meeting the fiance shortly thereafter, and I couldn't wait to tell him this story, but it took me a long time to manage it, because I started laughing every time I got to the "Your Majesty" part. (That guy must have rehearsed a lot to keep such a straight face.) And later that evening, I received a few genuine compliments on my dress (which is pretty, if I do say so myself, though not especially regal) from kind older ladies, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Or from saying, "Please, please: you may address me as 'Your Majesty.'" I have decided that I will now refer to that dress as "my imperial robes" or "my coronation gown" (e.g., "I'm glad my coronation gown is machine washable, because I have to wear it again next week"). And I have a feeling the fiance and I will be trying to ambush each other with hilariously convoluted compliments for months to come. "Did you already send in that deposit to the photographer, or should I do it right after I finish admiring how nice you look with your new haircut?" It's totally fun. Submit your ideas below!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
At Citibank we will meet accidentally
This evening I ducked into a branch of my bank to deposit a check. An elderly lady was sitting there in the vestibule, perched on a broad windowsill, wearing one of those plastic head-wrap things that old ladies wear. She didn't seem likely to mug me or steal my PIN, so I didn't pay much attention to her; I figured she was just keeping out of the rain, maybe waiting for a ride or something. And then, just as I put my card into the ATM, she said, "Will I die like my sister did?"
Was she talking to me? Who knows. She didn't seem offended by my failure to respond, and she didn't repeat the question, so I figured it must have been rhetorical. Then, after a silence (save for the beeping from the ATM keypad as I entered my PIN), she added, in a mournful tone, "She was only 40 years old." If I thought she really wanted an answer, I might have pointed out that she's clearly got her sister beat by a few decades at this point. Instead, I pretended to be really, really focused on my transaction. And just as the machine returned my card, the woman (changing the topic?) said, "A negro homosexual..."
She trailed off there, and although I am sure the rest of that thought was worth hearing, I didn't stick around to find out. Now I'm wondering if perhaps she was some kind of oracle. A new service provided by my bank: sad old ladies will put your problems in perspective while you wait!
Speaking of the elderly (how's that for a disrespectful segue): tomorrow I am off to New Haven to celebrate the release of Choices & Milestones, the long-awaited anthology of LifeTales stories. I'll be reading from my story about Paul Press (which, I am tickled to note, is a cited source for the Wikipedia article about J. Press), and speaking a bit about my experience as an intern. And, consequently, probably not blogging. But when my life returns to normal, you will be the first to hear about it!
Was she talking to me? Who knows. She didn't seem offended by my failure to respond, and she didn't repeat the question, so I figured it must have been rhetorical. Then, after a silence (save for the beeping from the ATM keypad as I entered my PIN), she added, in a mournful tone, "She was only 40 years old." If I thought she really wanted an answer, I might have pointed out that she's clearly got her sister beat by a few decades at this point. Instead, I pretended to be really, really focused on my transaction. And just as the machine returned my card, the woman (changing the topic?) said, "A negro homosexual..."
She trailed off there, and although I am sure the rest of that thought was worth hearing, I didn't stick around to find out. Now I'm wondering if perhaps she was some kind of oracle. A new service provided by my bank: sad old ladies will put your problems in perspective while you wait!
Speaking of the elderly (how's that for a disrespectful segue): tomorrow I am off to New Haven to celebrate the release of Choices & Milestones, the long-awaited anthology of LifeTales stories. I'll be reading from my story about Paul Press (which, I am tickled to note, is a cited source for the Wikipedia article about J. Press), and speaking a bit about my experience as an intern. And, consequently, probably not blogging. But when my life returns to normal, you will be the first to hear about it!
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