Nothing to say but what a day

Sorry so quiet! I've been working 12-hour days this week, copy-editing. You know those fashion magazines that put out Bible-sized issues once or twice a year? Well, think of me, slaving away, when you see the fall issues on the stands. Anyway, all this hard work is good for my bank account, but bad for my blog. And when I can grab a minute, I'm working on wedding stuff: we're almost at the 6-month mark, which means the big day is just around the corner. Not in the real world where the rest of you live, of course; just in the bizarro world of wedding planning. Tonight the Hampton Jitney will whisk me out of Manhattan for a much-needed escape and a weekend with the family, and I can't wait. But you all will have to.

In other news: 2 more "Rosa Vilchez" bags today, from the deli downstairs!

Paper bag princesses

A couple of months back, I bought myself a snack at the Bread Factory and noticed, when I got home, that the paper bag they gave me had the words "EVELYN WHITE" printed on the bottom. This caught my attention because I happen to know an Evelyn White (probably not all that unlikely, statistically speaking), so I saved the bag to show it to her, but I didn't have any explanation for it. The bag was white, so I figured maybe "Evelyn" was the name for the shade of white or the style of the bag. Ladies' shoes have ladies' names; maybe paper bags do too. Who knows.

Well, this week I ordered food from two other 8th Avenue chains and brought home two more white paper bags with women's names (and recent dates) printed on the bottom. I am officially nonplussed by this phenomenon. From Bagel Stix:

And, a few days later, from Ray's Pizza:

Can somebody please explain to me what's going on here? Is each bag stamped with the name of the person who assembled it, like some sort of handcrafted treasure? That would seem out of proportion with the level of craftsmanship involved. Is this a private tribute to the women in someone's life -- like the "Nina"s hidden in a Hirschfeld drawing? Please, someone solve this mystery for me, because it has me so perturbed that I am taking pictures of paper bags. I fear I may be losing my mind. I fear it is only a matter of time before I turn over a bag and find my own name. Which would be spooky, in a baffling sort of way; I would feel like I was living in a very, very low-budget suspense thriller.

The latest: This morning's cheese danish (purchased at the deli in the building where I work -- subpar baked goods, but you can't beat it for convenience) came in a bag labeled "March 09 07 ROSA VILCHEZ." Curiouser and curiouser...

ETA: I am not the first to ponder this urban mystery... in fact, it's been covered on "All Things Considered"! I can't wait to listen when I get home. God bless the internet.

What's in a name?

Very observant readers may have noticed the addition of a new category here at Restricted View: "titles as titles." I often find myself discussing, deconstructing, admiring or deploring the titles of things, and although some people don't appreciate that particular critical exercise, I figure there may be others who do. And this seemed like the week to introduce the idea, since we're all getting such enjoyment out of recontextualizing book titles.

I'd like to mark the occasion by sharing two titles that made me laugh recently. The first is the title of Stephen Colbert's forthcoming book:

I Am America (and So Can You!)

I've been giggling over that one for a couple weeks now. I feel like I should preorder the book (or better yet, the audio book!) just to pay for all the enjoyment I've gotten out of it already.

The other is from a recent issue of the usually very serious-minded Commonweal magazine. I don't know why we keep encouraging Christopher Hitchens by taking him seriously, but I got a good laugh out of Eugene McCarraher's review of Hitchens's latest book, God Is Not Great, which is titled:

"This Book Is Not Good"

Hee. (The review is available online, if you're curious; I haven't finished it yet.) As for the blog categories, I am open to suggestions, so let me know if there are new ones you'd like to see or current ones for which you have no use. I am here to serve.

The Rake's Progress

My second entry in the Dizzies Title Bout is up! Thanks to the fiance for the books, the camera, and the skillful, glare-reducing photography technique. Click on it for a larger version -- and let me know if you think I should post the titles. Then, check out the rest of the entries! Some very stiff competition.

The last hole, played with a handicap

When I told my younger sister I was on my way to see a play called Radio Golf, she said, "That sounds even more boring than televised golf." It is a strange title, no doubt about it, especially for the final entry in what TCG is calling "The August Wilson Century Cycle." It sounds like it was generated at random, like Wilson riffled through a dictionary wearing a blindfold and chose the first two nouns his finger landed on. The result is like a nonsense verse, memorable and pleasing to the ear, but not at all evocative. Say it to yourself, and wait for an image to form; nothing will come. It stubbornly refuses to take shape. The title might as well be "Word Salad." (Or "Googlewhack" -- and in that light, it is a very decade-appropriate choice.) Following the impressionism of Two Trains Running, the lyricism of Joe Turner's Come and Gone, the poetry of Gem of the Ocean and the grandeur of King Hedley II, the perplexing diffidence of Radio Golf feels more like a question mark than an exclamation point.

This is probably not an accident -- after all, by the time this play (set in 1997) kicks off, Aunt Ester is long dead, and the cost of that loss seems to outweigh any of the century's gains. But appropriate or not, the title is a puzzle, and so my hat is off to the folks at TMG -- The Marketing Group, if they are the ones responsible for the Radio Golf logo. I stopped to admire it the first time I passed the off-the-beaten-path Cort Theatre, where the Broadway production ends its run next week. Rather than trying to make the title itself concrete, they styled the words "August Wilson's Radio Golf" in red, white and blue block letters, combined with a flag, like a campaign poster (not unlike this, and very much like the Bush Cheney '04 logo, but I'm having a hard time finding an example of that one that hasn't been satirically altered). Presented in this way, the title suddenly refers directly to the play's central character, a would-be mayoral candidate (the "radio" and "golf" portions of the plot center on a supporting character); it communicates clearly; it gestures to the work's greater significance (the story Wilson is telling is America's story). It's simple, it's striking, it looks great on a marquee. Very, very well done.

I wish I could tell you that what's happening onstage at the Cort is as focused and effective as the posters outside. Radio Golf is not Wilson's finest play, it's true, but it's hardly an embarrassment to his legacy. The people who grab your attention in the other nine plays, with their wild imaginations and unpredictable moods and rich histories and, above all, their wonderful language -- the characters who stay with you when you leave the theatre -- you can find them in Radio Golf, too. But, for the most part, this production hasn't found them. With one exception -- the reliably terrific Anthony Chisholm -- the actors in this cast barely scratch the surface of their characters. Harry Lennix, playing Harmond Wilks, the above-mentioned politician and the play's central character, is the biggest handicap. He's so stiff he's hard to watch; he seems to be longing for the final curtain, and waiting nervously for his next cue in the meantime. The script doesn't give Wilks much color, it's true, but the conflict between tradition and progress (to put it very crudely) comes down to Wilks, in the end, and the play's success depends on our investment in his struggle. Lennix's wooden performance gives the audience nothing to hold on to, no sense that anything vital is at stake, no reason to care one way or the other. Tonya Pinkins, who plays his wife, has very little to do here, which isn't her fault, but it's still a surprise to see how little she's done with what Wilson did give her. James A. Williams, playing Roosevelt Hicks, the closest thing this play has to a villain, is far less stiff than Lennix but not much more effective. John Earl Jelks has a more colorful character to play, and he would do all right if he slowed down, but he and his castmates all seem determined to spit out their lines as fast as possible. It's as if director Kenny Leon, having noticed that the play was running long (no kidding!) and losing the attention of the audience, instructed his cast to pick up the pace until the play sounded like a 1930s comedy without the jokes. Too bad the pace wasn't the problem.

Only Anthony Chisholm, as this play's evasive truth-teller, Elder Joseph Barlow, takes his time, making sure each line is spoken by a fully-formed, living character. And only when Chisholm is onstage does the play come to life; only then does it feel like something from the August Wilson canon. Barlow's speech about carrying the flag in World War II, his explanation of how he was arrested for walking a dog -- prime examples of Wilson's remarkable ability to entertain, provoke and disarm an audience, expertly delivered. But Chisholm's way of skimming lightly over the text, picking at its richness without completely digging in, feels inadequate here. In the more fantastical Gem of the Ocean, where I last saw Chisholm on Broadway, a light touch was advisable; the appetite might have sickened, otherwise, confronted with such a surfeit of riches. But here, without a LisaGay Hamilton or a Ruben Santiago-Hudson or a Phylicia Rashad to pick up the slack, you find yourself wishing Chisholm would add a little ham to the menu.

I swear I don't seek this out, but it's becoming a staple of my reviews, this part where I tell you how my view was literally restricted by some aspect of the staging and/or the theatre's layout. I may have cursed myself when I chose a name for my blog. In this case, a climactic moment near the end of the play was blocked so badly that, as Sterling applied his "warpaint" and the rest of the audience hooted and clapped, those of us seated on the far left side of the orchestra found ourselves looking at James A. Williams's broad back. That means that at every performance, at least 15 people, all sitting in seats that (at full price) cost more than $80, are unable to see what is, for the rest of the audience, the play's most exciting moment -- all because nobody important ever bothered to watch the show from those seats.

Finally, I need to add a word of praise for David Gallo's marvelous set design. The storefront real estate office is simple enough, but it's the details that surround it -- the torn-away tin ceiling, the decaying second story, the frozen-in-time diner next door -- that really set the scene. With its focus on the middle class and its flat landscape of politics and urban development, Radio Golf can feel strangely set off from the rest of the Century Cycle. But Gallo's set places this play squarely in the center of the Hill District, and firmly in step with the plays that came before it. It isn't Gallo's fault that his set has more character than most of the play's performances -- I found myself wishing for a scene or two to be set around that old lunch counter. But that decade has been covered and left behind -- and Wilson wrote a wonderful play about the result. You just can't tell from the production now on Broadway.

Even in a production as flaccid as this one, August Wilson's writing brings out the academic in me; every time I read or see one of his plays, I want to go to grad school and spend the next seven years tracing the threads of symbolism and family history that run through his Century Cycle. Perhaps it is OK not to like August Wilson's plays, as Hilton Als would have it, but I much prefer to love them. I stand amazed at the way his work can be personal and grand, humble and sweeping all at once. How marvelous to have caught the end of the Cycle as it unfolded; to see Aunt Ester make her entrance, more than halfway through, first dead, then alive, then long forgotten, and then to look back at the completed Cycle and see her there at the beginning. I feel lucky to have been here to see it happen. I just wish the sendoff had been as inspiring as the work.

An American Dream...

Just wanted to call your attention to my first entry in the Dizzies "Title Bout." I'm still working on my second bookstacking masterwork -- how's yours coming along?

You became a legend of the silver screen

Yesterday, heading home from work, I passed a woman I thought was Penny Marshall. There was no way to be sure -- I didn't hear her talking, and she wasn't wearing anything monogrammed. And I suppose there are more than a few women in New York City who look kind of like Penny Marshall. But I still think it was her. And I was still considering the likelihood of this two blocks later when I passed a man who I am pretty sure was Robert De Niro. Again, I can't be positive -- he wasn't waxing poetic about the city as he walked ("My West Side... my private side") or anything like that. He wasn't doing anything but walking down the street, but he was walking in that tentative, I-hope-nobody-bothers-me style peculiar to the very famous, which (combined with the sunglasses he wore) helped me go from thinking "That guy looks like Robert De Niro" to "That guy is Robert De Niro." It also made him look surprisingly vulnerable. So I left him alone, as he probably was hoping I would (whether he was De Niro or not), and when I got to the fiance's place I said, "I think I just saw Robert De Niro! Except his physical presence was not as imposing as I would have expected." And my fiance said, "I think De Niro is a little guy." So I looked it up: this is true! Did you know he's only 5'9"?

I could be wrong. Maybe there was a celebrity look-alikes convention in Clinton yesterday, or maybe my mind was just trying to make my walk home more exciting than my long day at work had been. If you have conclusive evidence that either or both of these people were not in NYC yesterday, feel free to burst my bubble. But in the meantime, I'm crediting myself with two more Eighth Avenue star-sightings!

You can't judge a book by how literate it look

All this week I've been sitting down at a computer, intending to Get Things Done, and then accidentally spending all afternoon browsing wonderful internet finds instead. Today's distracting find (and a contest!) comes courtesy of The Dizzies. First, be inspired by the Sorted Books project. Then, take a moment to work out the kink in your neck from twisting your head (and squinting) to read the titles. (It's worth it!) Then, try creating your own! How can a girl get anything done with this sort of challenge before her?

Make them hear you

Nothing adds excitement to a new Broadway season like a new Tony Award! Two awards, actually, split as usual between plays and musicals. Of course, seeing as they fall in the unglamorous category of "creative" awards, the new Sound Design honors will have next to no impact on the Tonys telecast. But still, a victory for the profession, even if it does come too late for this year's should-have-been-contenders, Gregory Clarke (Journey's End) and Brian Ronan (Spring Awakening). I just hope they really mean it this year. I'd hate to break the sound designers' hearts with a repeat of last year's cruel Tony Administration Committee games: "We've decided to honor replacement cast members... Psyche!"

In other mildly-amusing Tony-related news, someone recently visited Restricted View from Italy, and took advantage of Google's offer to translate my writing into Italian! And you thought I couldn't get any more lyrical. The result is so much fun, you might want to consider reading this blog exclusively in semi-accurate Italian from now on. I particularly loved this rendering of paragraph 21 of my Tonys recap:

Dopo, Marvin Hamlisch, jeans ancora non da portare, introduce il montage dell'anno nei Musicals. Chi non ha memoires affettuosi del Grinch che ha rubato Natale? Il silenzio scomodo greets le clip dei tempi che sono A-Changin'.

ETA: I see it gets even better when you run that paragraph through the translator again.

Life outside the Wicked stage

Spotted an hour ago: 2006 Tony nominee and current Wicked cast member Jayne Houdyshell! Only this afternoon, as I walked past the Circle in the Square theatre complex where Wicked and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee are playing, did I learn that Houdyshell is now filling the role of Madame Morrible. For just a second, I felt a tiny flicker of interest in actually seeing Wicked. Then I remembered Idina's performance of "Defying Gravity" at the 2004 Tonys, and that tiny flicker died down, and I went on with my day.

[It is always a weird experience to look up clips like that on YouTube, intending to link to them without further commentary, trusting that their awfulness will be self-evident... and at the same time knowing that the only reason they're on YouTube in the first place is that someone somewhere thinks they're the awesomest thing ever and wants to share the awesomeness with you. I almost feel guilty taking advantage of other people's enthusiasm for my own derisive ends.]

Anyway, when I left work this evening, there she was, having a smoke outside the theatre. I realize it is probably not such a blogworthy "sighting," spotting a person standing outside her place of work. And it looked like she was talking to some young people, potentially Wicked groupies, who then posed for a photo with... some other guy. Which means I probably had a simultaneous and, in some circles, far more exciting actor-sighting and didn't know it. But I needed something to post today, all right? My favorite part of the whole thing is that Jayne was standing beneath a sign affixed to an adjacent parking garage that said: PARK HERE FOR WICKED / FROZEN. Looks like somebody was counting on an unrealistically long run... but we're coming up on three years, fellas. Seems like enough time to change (or cover) the bottom half of the sign.

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Daytime layabouts, take note! Tomorrow afternoon, TCM is marking Judy Holliday's birthday by airing a handful of her movies. They're not showing my favorite, It Should Happen to You, but if you've been hankering to see Born Yesterday since I recommended it months ago, this is your chance! Also on the docket: Adam's Rib -- tune in for the Judy, stay for the Tracy-Hepburn battle of the sexes -- and two I haven't seen (yet), The Marrying Kind and Full of Life.