I haven't been posting here lately, but had reason to add a few posts to my Fairhope blog, which you might find interesting. My mind is in Fairhope these days, and that's a good place for it, as I'm working on a novel in that setting. Over the weekend of October 1 I was at a symposium at U Penn about Wharton Esherick, the sculptor and artist in wood, who lived a little over a year in Fairhope. It was very inspiring, and my Fairhope blog will reflect some of my inspiration for the immediate future. You can find it here.
See you around the Internet!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Sleeping Well Is the Best Revenge
I love to sleep. Here's a post I wrote originally in November of 2008.
Sleep is good for you, America. I don’t know where we seem to have gotten the idea that it was a sign of weakness.
Over the years I've gone from being the sleepiest child in the neighborhood (the lady next door once found me asleep under a bed in her house in the middle of the day) to having occasional bouts with insomnia, to a regular pattern of waking up at about 3 A.M. and not being able to fall asleep again. Probably the pattern was made worse by having a remote control in my bed and via television enjoying the switchable presence of Jay Leno, ABC World News Now, the choice of a couple of movies all the time, and cooking and decoration shows at all hours.
That all changed when I moved to Hoboken. I only bought one tv. I was removed from the residue of problems of my own and my friends and relatives. I began sleeping heavier and longer than I had in years. I don’t know how to account for it, but from the first it felt good to get all this sleep. I’m beginning to wonder if narcolepsy is a sign of aging. Maybe it’s because I’m still kind of on vacation from my life. Until the move I was fraught with responsibilities and a certain amount of low-grade, under-the-radar stress all day, and at night I had that tv in the bedroom. Almost as soon as I moved here last December, I found myself sleeping through the night again, experiencing heavy dreams, and waking up refreshed.
I’m sure being removed from my daily stress did it, but I have new stuff: I totally fired my old life, live alone in a strange city, have the daily job of learning the ropes and coping with all the new situations of a total upheaval. That’s not stress?
Apparently not so much. I’ve reverted to my old childhood sleep patterns, and occasionally even grab an hour’s nap during the day. I haven’t been found dozing under the neighbors’ furniture yet, but I’m getting a lot of sleep. On the other hand, sometimes I wake up abnormally early, say 4 A.M., but if that happens I make myself comfortable—go to the bathroom, eat a little yogurt, curl up under a cozy throw in the living room and watch a little neutral tv (NO politics!), and when I start to yawn—it might be as long as two hours—I go back to bed. Then I can sleep another couple of hours.
Here’s the thing of it: Nobody thinks they can do that. “When I’m up, I’m up!” they say, and they make it true by leaping out of bed at the first glimmer of consciousness, turning on all the lights, making coffee, shoving papers around and generally acting as if the day had started. This is followed by a day of feeling sleep deprived and cross. Now, I know it's going to be difficult to do this if you're reading this at your desk just before a big meeting, but it will be worth it tomorrow if you start this sleeping-more project tonight.
Falling asleep seems to be a major accomplishment. We get performance anxiety about being able to do it.
My technique on my early-morning wakeup is to give myself the gift of going back to bed happily. Look, it’s still early, still dark, that bed has all those soft covers, and I’ve got a few more hours before the rest of the world wakes up. I’ll just lie down here and close my eyes—and not open them for two hours no matter what. Maybe I won’t sleep, but I’ll take deep breaths, think how lucky I am, and rest my eyes.
It almost always works. Even helps with the Daylight Saving Time nonsense somebody imposed at the wrong time of year (Why make the days shorter in the winter when they are naturally shorter?).
And when it doesn't work--on those nights when it feels as if I'm not going to fall asleep at all, one Benadryl will do the trick. I have a rule not to take more than one a week, and I seldom resort to that. I also remember that in my case it will take almost an hour to kick in so I don't let performance anxiety get in the way. Alternatively, if I detect a few unidentified aches and pains, I allow myself one or two ibuprofen tablets or an aspirin. But mostly I just lie down, review the good stuff of the day and ignore the bad, take deep breaths for five minutes, all the while thinking about how lucky I am to be alive and ordering a good dream by imagining something pleasant like a field of daisies or the breeze on my skin as waves lap on the beach.
Getting more sleep would be better for everybody. Put it on your list of New Year's Resolutions. In fact, it should be on the national agenda. I hope that early in his administration, the next president makes a beautiful speech about its importance. It would put me right to sleep.
Sleep is good for you, America. I don’t know where we seem to have gotten the idea that it was a sign of weakness.
Over the years I've gone from being the sleepiest child in the neighborhood (the lady next door once found me asleep under a bed in her house in the middle of the day) to having occasional bouts with insomnia, to a regular pattern of waking up at about 3 A.M. and not being able to fall asleep again. Probably the pattern was made worse by having a remote control in my bed and via television enjoying the switchable presence of Jay Leno, ABC World News Now, the choice of a couple of movies all the time, and cooking and decoration shows at all hours.
That all changed when I moved to Hoboken. I only bought one tv. I was removed from the residue of problems of my own and my friends and relatives. I began sleeping heavier and longer than I had in years. I don’t know how to account for it, but from the first it felt good to get all this sleep. I’m beginning to wonder if narcolepsy is a sign of aging. Maybe it’s because I’m still kind of on vacation from my life. Until the move I was fraught with responsibilities and a certain amount of low-grade, under-the-radar stress all day, and at night I had that tv in the bedroom. Almost as soon as I moved here last December, I found myself sleeping through the night again, experiencing heavy dreams, and waking up refreshed.
I’m sure being removed from my daily stress did it, but I have new stuff: I totally fired my old life, live alone in a strange city, have the daily job of learning the ropes and coping with all the new situations of a total upheaval. That’s not stress?
Apparently not so much. I’ve reverted to my old childhood sleep patterns, and occasionally even grab an hour’s nap during the day. I haven’t been found dozing under the neighbors’ furniture yet, but I’m getting a lot of sleep. On the other hand, sometimes I wake up abnormally early, say 4 A.M., but if that happens I make myself comfortable—go to the bathroom, eat a little yogurt, curl up under a cozy throw in the living room and watch a little neutral tv (NO politics!), and when I start to yawn—it might be as long as two hours—I go back to bed. Then I can sleep another couple of hours.
Here’s the thing of it: Nobody thinks they can do that. “When I’m up, I’m up!” they say, and they make it true by leaping out of bed at the first glimmer of consciousness, turning on all the lights, making coffee, shoving papers around and generally acting as if the day had started. This is followed by a day of feeling sleep deprived and cross. Now, I know it's going to be difficult to do this if you're reading this at your desk just before a big meeting, but it will be worth it tomorrow if you start this sleeping-more project tonight.
Falling asleep seems to be a major accomplishment. We get performance anxiety about being able to do it.
My technique on my early-morning wakeup is to give myself the gift of going back to bed happily. Look, it’s still early, still dark, that bed has all those soft covers, and I’ve got a few more hours before the rest of the world wakes up. I’ll just lie down here and close my eyes—and not open them for two hours no matter what. Maybe I won’t sleep, but I’ll take deep breaths, think how lucky I am, and rest my eyes.
It almost always works. Even helps with the Daylight Saving Time nonsense somebody imposed at the wrong time of year (Why make the days shorter in the winter when they are naturally shorter?).
And when it doesn't work--on those nights when it feels as if I'm not going to fall asleep at all, one Benadryl will do the trick. I have a rule not to take more than one a week, and I seldom resort to that. I also remember that in my case it will take almost an hour to kick in so I don't let performance anxiety get in the way. Alternatively, if I detect a few unidentified aches and pains, I allow myself one or two ibuprofen tablets or an aspirin. But mostly I just lie down, review the good stuff of the day and ignore the bad, take deep breaths for five minutes, all the while thinking about how lucky I am to be alive and ordering a good dream by imagining something pleasant like a field of daisies or the breeze on my skin as waves lap on the beach.
Getting more sleep would be better for everybody. Put it on your list of New Year's Resolutions. In fact, it should be on the national agenda. I hope that early in his administration, the next president makes a beautiful speech about its importance. It would put me right to sleep.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
A Matinee in the City
I had no doubt I would be crazy about the new production of A Little Night Music playing at the Walter Kerr in New York. A bus from Hoboken should get me there in plenty of time, and there was no one in that audience who could possibly be a bigger fan of Bernadette Peters or Elaine Stritch. Many of my blog posts go into detail about buses being late, me having to walk farther than I expect, me being under stress to get where I'm going--I admit there were a few such glitches this time, but I shall spare you those details because I want to tell you about one of the best experiences I've ever had in a theater.
I've never seen a production of this particular show before. I saw the original Ingmar Bergman film (Smiles of a Summer Night) which inspired it, and Woody Allen's Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, which surely was influenced by that film. I'll never forget the first time I heard its principal hit song, "Send in the Clowns," sung by Glynis Johns on my little black and white television. But I was saving this one until the right production came along.
Being a fan of Elaine Stritch, I loved her show At Liberty, which I saw on DVD; and her work in Company, of which I have the original cast album. I saw the documentary film of the making of that cast album, in which Stritch is clearly an artist determined to do her best work, and is a wonder when she pulls it off.
In A Little Night Music she rises to a level of classiness we know she has, and delivers a comedy line or sings a poignant comedy song ("Liaisons") with, stealing a phrase Sondheim gives us in a later number, "her usual flair." In the audience, we are delighted to see that wheelchair (for the character, of course; Ms. Stritch is hale and hearty at 84) roll her onstage to sing or talk to us.
Bernadette Peters is a national treasure. I saw her in Sunday in the Park with George, and, like at least half of the world, have seen and been won over by her in dozens of movies and television appearances. Her stage presence, charm and knockout voice are always delicious and would enhance any show. This one has been waiting for her until the time was right, which is now.
I had heard some of the music, but was not completely prepared for the lyrics, the integration of song-to-show, and the wonderful Stephen Sondheim surprises of the comedy, romance, melody and dance of this piece. It was a delight to be seeing it all come together and work so elegantly from start to finish. Not only were Peters and Stritch poised and flawless, they were joined by a cast of perfectly matched foils and partners. The program informed me that Alexander Hanson has played not only this role (Frederik) but Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music and numerous other straight and musical plays. He was simply perfect in this show, and the mind can picture him easily in many others--and one hopes to see him in them all. Ramona Mallory was a beauteous and pitch-perfect Anne, but I wasn't entirely prepared for the breathtaking "The Miller's Son" as performed by the beautiful Leigh Ann Larkin in the last act. She made the most of the number, and how.
By this time we were all waiting for Peters to sing "Send in the Clowns" and the whole audience seemed to hold its breath as one from the opening notes and to exhale and roar with applause at its end. The song never stood alone for me as just a love song, but it fits superbly into its place here, with its theatrical and circus references, and befits its singer, who is facing the prospect of life not quite in her grasp as she moves in age and for once is unsure.
There is much in this play. Misguided love, reflections on life, life itself passing before us under the midsummer night's trees, a young man about to misspend his life, an old lady looking forward to her funeral with "the best champagne," and love, love, love--in almost all its forms. And the beautiful music and joie de vivre of Stephen Sondheim. I know why I never saw this show before. I was waiting for this particular production.
I've never seen a production of this particular show before. I saw the original Ingmar Bergman film (Smiles of a Summer Night) which inspired it, and Woody Allen's Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, which surely was influenced by that film. I'll never forget the first time I heard its principal hit song, "Send in the Clowns," sung by Glynis Johns on my little black and white television. But I was saving this one until the right production came along.Being a fan of Elaine Stritch, I loved her show At Liberty, which I saw on DVD; and her work in Company, of which I have the original cast album. I saw the documentary film of the making of that cast album, in which Stritch is clearly an artist determined to do her best work, and is a wonder when she pulls it off.
In A Little Night Music she rises to a level of classiness we know she has, and delivers a comedy line or sings a poignant comedy song ("Liaisons") with, stealing a phrase Sondheim gives us in a later number, "her usual flair." In the audience, we are delighted to see that wheelchair (for the character, of course; Ms. Stritch is hale and hearty at 84) roll her onstage to sing or talk to us.Bernadette Peters is a national treasure. I saw her in Sunday in the Park with George, and, like at least half of the world, have seen and been won over by her in dozens of movies and television appearances. Her stage presence, charm and knockout voice are always delicious and would enhance any show. This one has been waiting for her until the time was right, which is now.
I had heard some of the music, but was not completely prepared for the lyrics, the integration of song-to-show, and the wonderful Stephen Sondheim surprises of the comedy, romance, melody and dance of this piece. It was a delight to be seeing it all come together and work so elegantly from start to finish. Not only were Peters and Stritch poised and flawless, they were joined by a cast of perfectly matched foils and partners. The program informed me that Alexander Hanson has played not only this role (Frederik) but Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music and numerous other straight and musical plays. He was simply perfect in this show, and the mind can picture him easily in many others--and one hopes to see him in them all. Ramona Mallory was a beauteous and pitch-perfect Anne, but I wasn't entirely prepared for the breathtaking "The Miller's Son" as performed by the beautiful Leigh Ann Larkin in the last act. She made the most of the number, and how.
By this time we were all waiting for Peters to sing "Send in the Clowns" and the whole audience seemed to hold its breath as one from the opening notes and to exhale and roar with applause at its end. The song never stood alone for me as just a love song, but it fits superbly into its place here, with its theatrical and circus references, and befits its singer, who is facing the prospect of life not quite in her grasp as she moves in age and for once is unsure.
There is much in this play. Misguided love, reflections on life, life itself passing before us under the midsummer night's trees, a young man about to misspend his life, an old lady looking forward to her funeral with "the best champagne," and love, love, love--in almost all its forms. And the beautiful music and joie de vivre of Stephen Sondheim. I know why I never saw this show before. I was waiting for this particular production.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Time, The Women, and Facebook
I just noticed it's been almost a month since I've posted here. As usual, waiting for the lightning bolt of inspiration to strike, and I've been quenching that thirst in other ways for some time.
A friend on Facebook wrote last night that she was watching The Women and noticed after some time that there were zero men in the cast. Wasn't there a movie in the 60's about a group of women, maybe one of them a lesbian, maybe some murder or some such thing? What was this movie?
What she was watching the recent chick flick inspired by (not a remake) the old theater chestnut by Clare Booth Luce, The Women.
The original is an outlandish comedy about the shallowness of New York society women of the 1930's, with some costumes to die for if they don't kill you first. Feminists today might find the star-laden farce offensive; there is no doubt it insults women with a very superficial and unflattering angle on their lives, but in the context of its day attention must be paid. It's something of a forerunner to "The Real Housewives of New York City" and other incarnations of that franchise. 
The top actresses of their day, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford and others almost literally sank their teeth into this one.
Did I mention the costumes are worth the price of the rental? The original movie version was remade as The Opposite Sex in the 1950's in a forgettable version with June Allyson in the Norma Shearer role, and the addition of at least one male character, the straying husband, played by Leslie Nielson in his leading-man days.
The movie about women from 1966, with its shocking lesbian subplot, (and Candice Bergen doing the honors) was The Group, from the Mary McCarthy novel.
Which leads me clumsily to my other reason for not blogging. When I'm not on Facebook (pretty correctly nailed by Betty White on Saturday Night Live as "a huge waste of time"), I've been pecking at an old idea I've had for a novel. There. My secret is out. I don't want to jinx the effort by talking about it, so that's all I'll say except that I'll post much less often in the near future.
If I can wean myself from Facebook I may actually begin to do some real writing.
A friend on Facebook wrote last night that she was watching The Women and noticed after some time that there were zero men in the cast. Wasn't there a movie in the 60's about a group of women, maybe one of them a lesbian, maybe some murder or some such thing? What was this movie?
What she was watching the recent chick flick inspired by (not a remake) the old theater chestnut by Clare Booth Luce, The Women.
The original is an outlandish comedy about the shallowness of New York society women of the 1930's, with some costumes to die for if they don't kill you first. Feminists today might find the star-laden farce offensive; there is no doubt it insults women with a very superficial and unflattering angle on their lives, but in the context of its day attention must be paid. It's something of a forerunner to "The Real Housewives of New York City" and other incarnations of that franchise. 
The top actresses of their day, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford and others almost literally sank their teeth into this one.
Did I mention the costumes are worth the price of the rental? The original movie version was remade as The Opposite Sex in the 1950's in a forgettable version with June Allyson in the Norma Shearer role, and the addition of at least one male character, the straying husband, played by Leslie Nielson in his leading-man days.The movie about women from 1966, with its shocking lesbian subplot, (and Candice Bergen doing the honors) was The Group, from the Mary McCarthy novel.
Which leads me clumsily to my other reason for not blogging. When I'm not on Facebook (pretty correctly nailed by Betty White on Saturday Night Live as "a huge waste of time"), I've been pecking at an old idea I've had for a novel. There. My secret is out. I don't want to jinx the effort by talking about it, so that's all I'll say except that I'll post much less often in the near future.
If I can wean myself from Facebook I may actually begin to do some real writing.
Friday, July 2, 2010
A Glorious Day and a Wonderful Play
I was getting cabin fever big time, enduring the heat by staying inside near the air conditioner, watching movies and tv shows that didn’t engage me. I needed to get out.
The forecast for Wednesday was for clear skies, dropping humidity, and temperatures peaking at 81 degrees. I could go to the gym Monday and Tuesday and skip the workout Wednesday, which would be matinee day at the theater. And the weather forecast promised the perfect day to do it.
There is always a feast of options in New York. I wanted to see Red, the play about Mark Rothko with Alfred Molina in the lead and Eddie Redmayne as his foil, a performance which had just won the Tony award. For some reason I hadn’t been able to make the right connection online even though I was willing to pay top dollar for this one. Maybe it was solidly sold out for months because of the Tony award. It would be my first choice, but in the back of my mind was the information that the much-heralded production of South Pacific at Lincoln Center would close in a matter of weeks, and I had been hoping I’d catch that. Maybe this would be the time. There was a new play by A.R. Gurney at Lincoln Center too; it dealt with Katherine Cornell and looked to be something I’d like.
What I knew I’d like was a day to roam around in perfect weather in New York. It’s a short bus ride, and there are so many things I haven’t even done since I moved to Hoboken in December 2007 that I wanted and needed a day to do whatever struck me. There is an exhibition of King Tut’s treasures somewhere in the theater district, and it’s time I spent a few hours either at MOMA or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
First, I would secure tickets to a matinee. The weather made standing in the half-price ticket line in Times Square bearable. It can actually be downright pleasant to hear people discussing the different shows up on the board if it’s not bitter cold or swelteringly hot. I had bought some cute clothes so I knew I could hack the city. What to wear? Well, not the white pants I’d bought—in New York you can only wear black or something likewise drably chic and sophisticated. White pants would brand me as an out-of-towner, and even though I am one I don’t want to look it. Black pants, a bright blue camisole almost revealing cleavage, chandelier earrings, a white blazer and new black sandals rather than my ubiquitous flip-flops.
On my way to the tkts. booth in Times Square I passed the King Tut exhibit, the theater with signs for Red, and the theater with a play called Next Fall, which had its excellent New York Times review posted in front. I went onward to the line at 47th and Broadway, the fabled intersection that is the NY shot in every movie since movies began. There I jostled with some 900 other people, some in white slacks, waiting to get to the front and buy a ticket to something and at a discount. I decided to ask for Red even though it wasn’t listed as available, and ask for Next Fall if they couldn’t dig me up a stray lone seat at Red.
I asked the ticket clerk if there was anything for Red, just one seat, and he informed me that Red had closed the past weekend. This floored me. No wonder I couldn’t bring it up online! I felt very out of it, not knowing about this closing--but did get a seat in the middle of the 10th row for Next Fall.
Now it was 11 A.M. I had three hours before the play started. Lunch in a fun neighborhood--which one? I wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art, but forgot how to get to its train. The little toe on my left foot was beginning to feel as if it might get a blister from the new sandals. I found a train going uptown, but unfortunately it wasn’t going where I wanted to go so I got off at 72nd Street. This was my first exposure in my new life (in Hoboken) to a neighborhood where I had lived some 40 years ago. I hadn’t been in this particular spot in NYC for over 20 years, not even to visit. That subway station, formerly grungy and a little dangerous, was now spruce and clean—and the park above it, once a “needle park,” was renamed Verdi park and was full of leafy trees and nice, clean, relaxed people people of all ethnic groups and ages. I knew there’d be a pharmacy nearby and I could pick up some band-aids and sit on a bench to apply one, taking care of that wee pain in my toe.
Got the band-aids and began walking toward Lincoln Center. Nice walk, but my little toe on the other foot was beginning to hurt too. I found a bench and sat down and bandaged both toes. Blessed relief! Now I was at the corner of Amsterdam and 66th, with the steps to the back of the fountain ahead of me. I always associate that fountain with my best friend Jerry, who met me there one Saturday morning in 1964, when I had first moved to New York. The fountain for some reason was going through its entire dance of highs and lows—as would be seen a few years later in the first movie The Producers when Gene Wilder danced around it. Today the fountain was undulating between very low sprays to the medium height—soothing and elegant in effect.
A stroll around the fountain, memories of that morning when Jerry and I delighted in its scope and playfulness, lunch at a nice place that was once called “O’Neal’s Balloon” (because owner-actor Patrick O’Neal couldn’t legally name it a saloon), and is now a branch of P.J. Clarke’s, and I was ready to go see what this play called Next Fall was all about.
In the little theater now called the Helen Hayes, I had what is to me a perfect seat, right in the middle. I sat amid the matinee ladies I now think of as my personal tribe—women who love plays and see every one they can. A single guy looking to be about 60 came in a bit late (I was a bit early) and sat on my left.
Next Fall starts in a hospital waiting room, with characters we get to know gradually, awaiting the news of a loved one who lies in grave condition after an accident. There are uneasy laughs that grow into big ones as we recognize the genuine concern and love they all have for the young man, Luke, in the nearby room. Flashbacks introduce us to him, an extremely lovable and handsome chap who, we find, is a committed Christian and a somewhat closeted homosexual.
An excellent script and performances that are are spot-on from beginning to end. I am enjoying the performance of the man playing Luke’s father, uptight and serious, Conservative, not conflicted, a good guy we don’t want to hurt, but can't help knowing that may be coming in this story. The program reveals the actor to be Cotter Smith, who I recognize as a ubiquitous performer in Lifetime Movies for television.
I have always enjoyed Cotter Smith, although he often plays unsympathetic character. After this I shall have undying admiration for him as an actor.
Next Fall is a perfectly wonderful play. By its end I felt I had gotten to know every one of these people, some intimately. Watch the clip from the Tony Award show; it captures the gay couple and the engaging actors, Patrick Breen and Patrick Heusinger, who play them. Connie Ray portrays the mother as a perky-dynamite Southern type I know very well. There are simply no missteps in the production. I wished for Kleenex throughout the show and by the end the man next to me and I led the audience in a standing O that would still be going on if the actors had not walked off the stage. As we shambled with the group leaving the theater, I said, “Weren’t you surprised?” and he said he went because he had seen the bit on the Tony show, and he was so glad I liked it. We both felt we owned a bit of the show and were so glad there was a theater full of people who had joined us in watching. Walking to the bus terminal I followed a group of three matinee ladies who were discussing the finer points in New Jersey high volume. I was happy just hearing them. I've since learned that the show will close July 4, so my recommendation will do very little for it.
On the other hand, it did a great deal for me. It capped one of those almost-perfect days with a bouquet of insights and surprises, which to my mind is the very best thing a couple of hours in a theater can do.
The forecast for Wednesday was for clear skies, dropping humidity, and temperatures peaking at 81 degrees. I could go to the gym Monday and Tuesday and skip the workout Wednesday, which would be matinee day at the theater. And the weather forecast promised the perfect day to do it.
There is always a feast of options in New York. I wanted to see Red, the play about Mark Rothko with Alfred Molina in the lead and Eddie Redmayne as his foil, a performance which had just won the Tony award. For some reason I hadn’t been able to make the right connection online even though I was willing to pay top dollar for this one. Maybe it was solidly sold out for months because of the Tony award. It would be my first choice, but in the back of my mind was the information that the much-heralded production of South Pacific at Lincoln Center would close in a matter of weeks, and I had been hoping I’d catch that. Maybe this would be the time. There was a new play by A.R. Gurney at Lincoln Center too; it dealt with Katherine Cornell and looked to be something I’d like.
What I knew I’d like was a day to roam around in perfect weather in New York. It’s a short bus ride, and there are so many things I haven’t even done since I moved to Hoboken in December 2007 that I wanted and needed a day to do whatever struck me. There is an exhibition of King Tut’s treasures somewhere in the theater district, and it’s time I spent a few hours either at MOMA or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
First, I would secure tickets to a matinee. The weather made standing in the half-price ticket line in Times Square bearable. It can actually be downright pleasant to hear people discussing the different shows up on the board if it’s not bitter cold or swelteringly hot. I had bought some cute clothes so I knew I could hack the city. What to wear? Well, not the white pants I’d bought—in New York you can only wear black or something likewise drably chic and sophisticated. White pants would brand me as an out-of-towner, and even though I am one I don’t want to look it. Black pants, a bright blue camisole almost revealing cleavage, chandelier earrings, a white blazer and new black sandals rather than my ubiquitous flip-flops.
On my way to the tkts. booth in Times Square I passed the King Tut exhibit, the theater with signs for Red, and the theater with a play called Next Fall, which had its excellent New York Times review posted in front. I went onward to the line at 47th and Broadway, the fabled intersection that is the NY shot in every movie since movies began. There I jostled with some 900 other people, some in white slacks, waiting to get to the front and buy a ticket to something and at a discount. I decided to ask for Red even though it wasn’t listed as available, and ask for Next Fall if they couldn’t dig me up a stray lone seat at Red.
I asked the ticket clerk if there was anything for Red, just one seat, and he informed me that Red had closed the past weekend. This floored me. No wonder I couldn’t bring it up online! I felt very out of it, not knowing about this closing--but did get a seat in the middle of the 10th row for Next Fall.
Now it was 11 A.M. I had three hours before the play started. Lunch in a fun neighborhood--which one? I wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art, but forgot how to get to its train. The little toe on my left foot was beginning to feel as if it might get a blister from the new sandals. I found a train going uptown, but unfortunately it wasn’t going where I wanted to go so I got off at 72nd Street. This was my first exposure in my new life (in Hoboken) to a neighborhood where I had lived some 40 years ago. I hadn’t been in this particular spot in NYC for over 20 years, not even to visit. That subway station, formerly grungy and a little dangerous, was now spruce and clean—and the park above it, once a “needle park,” was renamed Verdi park and was full of leafy trees and nice, clean, relaxed people people of all ethnic groups and ages. I knew there’d be a pharmacy nearby and I could pick up some band-aids and sit on a bench to apply one, taking care of that wee pain in my toe.
Got the band-aids and began walking toward Lincoln Center. Nice walk, but my little toe on the other foot was beginning to hurt too. I found a bench and sat down and bandaged both toes. Blessed relief! Now I was at the corner of Amsterdam and 66th, with the steps to the back of the fountain ahead of me. I always associate that fountain with my best friend Jerry, who met me there one Saturday morning in 1964, when I had first moved to New York. The fountain for some reason was going through its entire dance of highs and lows—as would be seen a few years later in the first movie The Producers when Gene Wilder danced around it. Today the fountain was undulating between very low sprays to the medium height—soothing and elegant in effect.
A stroll around the fountain, memories of that morning when Jerry and I delighted in its scope and playfulness, lunch at a nice place that was once called “O’Neal’s Balloon” (because owner-actor Patrick O’Neal couldn’t legally name it a saloon), and is now a branch of P.J. Clarke’s, and I was ready to go see what this play called Next Fall was all about.
In the little theater now called the Helen Hayes, I had what is to me a perfect seat, right in the middle. I sat amid the matinee ladies I now think of as my personal tribe—women who love plays and see every one they can. A single guy looking to be about 60 came in a bit late (I was a bit early) and sat on my left.
Next Fall starts in a hospital waiting room, with characters we get to know gradually, awaiting the news of a loved one who lies in grave condition after an accident. There are uneasy laughs that grow into big ones as we recognize the genuine concern and love they all have for the young man, Luke, in the nearby room. Flashbacks introduce us to him, an extremely lovable and handsome chap who, we find, is a committed Christian and a somewhat closeted homosexual.An excellent script and performances that are are spot-on from beginning to end. I am enjoying the performance of the man playing Luke’s father, uptight and serious, Conservative, not conflicted, a good guy we don’t want to hurt, but can't help knowing that may be coming in this story. The program reveals the actor to be Cotter Smith, who I recognize as a ubiquitous performer in Lifetime Movies for television.
I have always enjoyed Cotter Smith, although he often plays unsympathetic character. After this I shall have undying admiration for him as an actor.Next Fall is a perfectly wonderful play. By its end I felt I had gotten to know every one of these people, some intimately. Watch the clip from the Tony Award show; it captures the gay couple and the engaging actors, Patrick Breen and Patrick Heusinger, who play them. Connie Ray portrays the mother as a perky-dynamite Southern type I know very well. There are simply no missteps in the production. I wished for Kleenex throughout the show and by the end the man next to me and I led the audience in a standing O that would still be going on if the actors had not walked off the stage. As we shambled with the group leaving the theater, I said, “Weren’t you surprised?” and he said he went because he had seen the bit on the Tony show, and he was so glad I liked it. We both felt we owned a bit of the show and were so glad there was a theater full of people who had joined us in watching. Walking to the bus terminal I followed a group of three matinee ladies who were discussing the finer points in New Jersey high volume. I was happy just hearing them. I've since learned that the show will close July 4, so my recommendation will do very little for it.
On the other hand, it did a great deal for me. It capped one of those almost-perfect days with a bouquet of insights and surprises, which to my mind is the very best thing a couple of hours in a theater can do.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Another Time, Another World
We who have ever lived near the Gulf of Mexico are in real grief right now. Although a world away, I think of it constantly and know that we are just a couple of hurricanes away from a disaster of far greater magnitude than we now envision. And, as one who lived there for many years, I am well aware that those hurricanes will come before the end of August and suspect it unlikely that the oil spill will be contained before then.
The beaches meant a lot to us in south Alabama. This is what I wrote in my book The Fair Hope of Heaven about the little beach in my home town:
You can see the old pictures all over Fairhope today – ladies in their modest bathing suits, gentlemen wearing neckties and straw boaters, gleeful children leaping into the warm unpolluted waters of Mobile Bay. Before 1928 the only way to arrive in Fairhope was by bay boat from Mobile…surely those were the days Fairhope was a paradise of summer joy, centered on the bay with its public pier, its sandy beach, its casino (not, as some would have it today, a gambling house, but a barn of a building with a big dance floor and showers and changing rooms for bathers), its little wharf restaurant, and its inns on the bluff overlooking the water -- with wide porches to catch the breeze.
There were once dance pavilions scattered along the beach front. Local bands played music you could dance to – the baker who moonlighted as a bandleader was dubbed “Buns Lombardo” by his buddies who wanted to capture all his talents with one moniker.
The first ice cream factory in the state was at the north end of the beach, where the duck park now is. There were sliding boards off the pier; there was a track that took the “People’s Railway” up the hill – uptown to the center of business. Fairhope was a town of talk in the winter – of ideas, meetings, forums, plans, and visions – but summers belonged to the beach.
By the 1950’s, when I was a teenager, there was as yet little air conditioning in our world. Our bodies adjusted to climate changes. We played outdoors all year long and found no displeasure in being hot in the summer, because, after all, summertime was when you got to go outside, climb trees, explore gullies, and swim in the bay every single day. Most everybody went to the Yacht Club to learn to sail and to win races. The public tennis courts were near the gully’s edge across from the University of South Alabama theater (at that time St. James Episcopal Church). Now there is a parking lot where the courts were. One of those early dance pavilions, Burkel’s, had become a roller rink by the 1940’s and was a popular place until it was destroyed by fire in the early 1950’s. Burkel’s was located on the beach at the foot of Pier Street
Even with excessive heat and humidity, we went to the beach. We didn’t perceive the heavy air as a sweltering damp blanket, but as a comforting mist-forest that reminded us that it was summer in the most wonderful life we could imagine.
The town today is working to mitigate the coming disaster. Above is a demonstration called "Hands Across the Sand" extending on Fairhope's beaches and beaches all across the Gulf Coast. So far Mobile Bay has not gotten much of the damage, but Fairhope and outlying communities, aware of the coming hurricane season, know that it is coming sooner or later. Work is being done, but nobody knows if anything will succeed. Diehard haters of the government, not expecting the president to come through, implore him to send out the military. Lovers of big companies are loath to see them as villains, even in this catastrophe. We would all love to know whom to blame and see them suffer, but the Republican South is challenged to accept that it might have been their own short-sightedness in seeking profit at the price of regulation.
The well will be stopped in time; some of the suffering will be alleviated; but it will never be the same in the beach communities that were seen as pristine, perfect little towns. How the ecology will work its way out cannot be known. We have hurricanes and more failures to cap the well to live through. It is difficult to be optimistic, but I am, at least at some level. Mankind is resilient, and nature is too. The best that can come of this tragedy is a new way of looking at our natural resources. Our children and grandchildren will deal with everything in a new way. I continue to have hope that they'll come closer to getting it right than we did.
The beaches meant a lot to us in south Alabama. This is what I wrote in my book The Fair Hope of Heaven about the little beach in my home town:
You can see the old pictures all over Fairhope today – ladies in their modest bathing suits, gentlemen wearing neckties and straw boaters, gleeful children leaping into the warm unpolluted waters of Mobile Bay. Before 1928 the only way to arrive in Fairhope was by bay boat from Mobile…surely those were the days Fairhope was a paradise of summer joy, centered on the bay with its public pier, its sandy beach, its casino (not, as some would have it today, a gambling house, but a barn of a building with a big dance floor and showers and changing rooms for bathers), its little wharf restaurant, and its inns on the bluff overlooking the water -- with wide porches to catch the breeze.
There were once dance pavilions scattered along the beach front. Local bands played music you could dance to – the baker who moonlighted as a bandleader was dubbed “Buns Lombardo” by his buddies who wanted to capture all his talents with one moniker.
The first ice cream factory in the state was at the north end of the beach, where the duck park now is. There were sliding boards off the pier; there was a track that took the “People’s Railway” up the hill – uptown to the center of business. Fairhope was a town of talk in the winter – of ideas, meetings, forums, plans, and visions – but summers belonged to the beach. By the 1950’s, when I was a teenager, there was as yet little air conditioning in our world. Our bodies adjusted to climate changes. We played outdoors all year long and found no displeasure in being hot in the summer, because, after all, summertime was when you got to go outside, climb trees, explore gullies, and swim in the bay every single day. Most everybody went to the Yacht Club to learn to sail and to win races. The public tennis courts were near the gully’s edge across from the University of South Alabama theater (at that time St. James Episcopal Church). Now there is a parking lot where the courts were. One of those early dance pavilions, Burkel’s, had become a roller rink by the 1940’s and was a popular place until it was destroyed by fire in the early 1950’s. Burkel’s was located on the beach at the foot of Pier Street
Even with excessive heat and humidity, we went to the beach. We didn’t perceive the heavy air as a sweltering damp blanket, but as a comforting mist-forest that reminded us that it was summer in the most wonderful life we could imagine.
The town today is working to mitigate the coming disaster. Above is a demonstration called "Hands Across the Sand" extending on Fairhope's beaches and beaches all across the Gulf Coast. So far Mobile Bay has not gotten much of the damage, but Fairhope and outlying communities, aware of the coming hurricane season, know that it is coming sooner or later. Work is being done, but nobody knows if anything will succeed. Diehard haters of the government, not expecting the president to come through, implore him to send out the military. Lovers of big companies are loath to see them as villains, even in this catastrophe. We would all love to know whom to blame and see them suffer, but the Republican South is challenged to accept that it might have been their own short-sightedness in seeking profit at the price of regulation. The well will be stopped in time; some of the suffering will be alleviated; but it will never be the same in the beach communities that were seen as pristine, perfect little towns. How the ecology will work its way out cannot be known. We have hurricanes and more failures to cap the well to live through. It is difficult to be optimistic, but I am, at least at some level. Mankind is resilient, and nature is too. The best that can come of this tragedy is a new way of looking at our natural resources. Our children and grandchildren will deal with everything in a new way. I continue to have hope that they'll come closer to getting it right than we did.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The Unreality of It All
I really don't know why I'm so hooked on television. It's an escape. It’s hypnotic. It reveals a reality that no one could possibly believe.
Some shows pit people against each other in odd situations. There are cooking contests; there are home decorating contests; there are shows about people whose houses are filled with clutter including unopened boxes of stuff they bought themselves years ago and don’t remember yet refuse to part with because they say they might need whatever it is someday.
People on daytime TV reveal their innermost thoughts with hysterical alacrity. Dr. Phil will tease out of his guests secrets that no previous generation would ever have admitted, and the subjects of these confrontations weep and take it in front of a studio audience and cameras. There was this family who came to him years ago--a battling couple with two girls, both dabbling in sex and drugs, all four defensive and hostile. After a few sessions with Dr. Phil the younger daughter revealed she was pregnant by her jailbird boy friend and Dr. Phil acted like a great solution would be for her to have the baby, grow up somehow, and everybody would be happy. She did have the baby, and for years now the family keeps coming back to the Dr. Phil show while she bounces from one reprobate felon to another, still doing drugs of some kind and still popping out babies that her parents—never paragons of maturity and wisdom themselves—are stuck raising. Dr. Phil consoled the mother by getting her some plastic surgery and a personal trainer.
Ordinary people aren’t allowed to be so any more; they willingly subject themselves to beauty makeovers, home makeovers, and life makeovers. Interior designers throw out people’s furniture, tear down walls, paint the places in garish colors and their victims squeal with delight and weep openly, proclaiming ecstatically that their lives have been changed forever. People are not only passionate about the inconsequential, they clamor to expose that passion to the world. There is a life coach who talks with couples about their marital problems in order to repair a dysfunctional marriage and rebuild an uncomfortable house. When the couple take prescribed steps to resolve their foundering relationship, the coach rewards the family with a home renovation that would cost $50-$100,000 in real life.
Some shows are about so-called “housewives”—women in their 30’s and 40’s who live in ritzy areas and have time for what men think of as the age-old female pursuits—backbiting, bitching, and spending money. The term “housewives” was taken from the ironic title of a comedy series called Desperate Housewives about a the soap-opera lives in a suburban neighborhood, and with it came a new definition. A housewife, rather than a wife and mother devoted to keeping hearth and home, now means a beautiful and overindulged woman with time and money on her hands and happens to have a husband and children. An exhaustive article in today's New York Times revealed the market research that goes into the planning of these shows which are advertised as "reality." The Real Housewives of New York City shows us a capsule slice of the lives of some well-chosen women who live on the Upper East Side and spend most of their waking hours at restaurants, fund raisers and fashion shows, gossiping and defending themselves against gossip by digging themselves even deeper in questionable behavior. The Real Housewives of New Jersey involves a gaggle of sisters and sisters-in-law who live in the same community and have an inordinate amount of time to visit each other and interfere in business that in another lifetime would have been private, if not in the community, at least to the the larger world that happens to own a television set. What the research apparently indicates is that when an interloper encroaches, enough drama will ensue that the viewers keep tuning in to be a part of the fireworks.
Dirty laundry is willingly aired. There are judges who officiate at small-claims settlements. There is a show that trades the mother and wife in one family for the mother and wife in another, diametrically opposed family--both on the borderline of what is accepted as normal—to see what happens. There is a show that pits young beauties against each other for the hand in marriage of a man none of them really knows. There is even one that turn those tables and makes young men compete for a nubile beauty, just as it once was in real life, when everyone wasn’t made up for the camera and most people knew each other pretty well before making that leap.
And of course there are the commercials. Some chipper woman with an irritating voice and in a white uniform bleats to an innocent man nearby that he should buy something called “Progressive.” Whether it is insurance or breakfast food I know not because I can’t make head or tail of her sales pitch and I mute it whenever I hear the sound of her. And if you like your vacuum cleaner, you apparently can tell because it talks to you and dresses like you. Then there is one commercial in which the woman throws away her mop and it falls in love with a nearby bowling ball.
All this jabbering cannot be good for the brain. I suspect it has altered our way of using that organ, giving us all shorter attention spans and addling us for serious thought in the hope of manipulating us to buy more products. I also suspect that it works. It’s hard to live in a quiet house with all television removed.
Try as I might to tell myself I’m wasting time with this white-noise surrounding my life, I still don’t seem able to turn away. Television is a great train wreck with all the victims exposed, bruise for bruise, much as on a hospital dramatic show (like House, which I watch religiously, or Grey's Anatomy, which I've never seen. (You can't watch everything.)
I said before it's a form of escapism, but what would I want to escape from? I am independent, I go where I want to (which, often as not, is New York City) and I seldom see anyone I don’t choose to see. Television brings people I don’t want to know about right into my apartment and shows me perversions I would never have known about. It keeps me from reading, from writing, it does little to entertain and nothing to enlighten. But I'm fascinated by the manufactured reality of it all.
Some shows pit people against each other in odd situations. There are cooking contests; there are home decorating contests; there are shows about people whose houses are filled with clutter including unopened boxes of stuff they bought themselves years ago and don’t remember yet refuse to part with because they say they might need whatever it is someday.
People on daytime TV reveal their innermost thoughts with hysterical alacrity. Dr. Phil will tease out of his guests secrets that no previous generation would ever have admitted, and the subjects of these confrontations weep and take it in front of a studio audience and cameras. There was this family who came to him years ago--a battling couple with two girls, both dabbling in sex and drugs, all four defensive and hostile. After a few sessions with Dr. Phil the younger daughter revealed she was pregnant by her jailbird boy friend and Dr. Phil acted like a great solution would be for her to have the baby, grow up somehow, and everybody would be happy. She did have the baby, and for years now the family keeps coming back to the Dr. Phil show while she bounces from one reprobate felon to another, still doing drugs of some kind and still popping out babies that her parents—never paragons of maturity and wisdom themselves—are stuck raising. Dr. Phil consoled the mother by getting her some plastic surgery and a personal trainer.
Ordinary people aren’t allowed to be so any more; they willingly subject themselves to beauty makeovers, home makeovers, and life makeovers. Interior designers throw out people’s furniture, tear down walls, paint the places in garish colors and their victims squeal with delight and weep openly, proclaiming ecstatically that their lives have been changed forever. People are not only passionate about the inconsequential, they clamor to expose that passion to the world. There is a life coach who talks with couples about their marital problems in order to repair a dysfunctional marriage and rebuild an uncomfortable house. When the couple take prescribed steps to resolve their foundering relationship, the coach rewards the family with a home renovation that would cost $50-$100,000 in real life.
Some shows are about so-called “housewives”—women in their 30’s and 40’s who live in ritzy areas and have time for what men think of as the age-old female pursuits—backbiting, bitching, and spending money. The term “housewives” was taken from the ironic title of a comedy series called Desperate Housewives about a the soap-opera lives in a suburban neighborhood, and with it came a new definition. A housewife, rather than a wife and mother devoted to keeping hearth and home, now means a beautiful and overindulged woman with time and money on her hands and happens to have a husband and children. An exhaustive article in today's New York Times revealed the market research that goes into the planning of these shows which are advertised as "reality." The Real Housewives of New York City shows us a capsule slice of the lives of some well-chosen women who live on the Upper East Side and spend most of their waking hours at restaurants, fund raisers and fashion shows, gossiping and defending themselves against gossip by digging themselves even deeper in questionable behavior. The Real Housewives of New Jersey involves a gaggle of sisters and sisters-in-law who live in the same community and have an inordinate amount of time to visit each other and interfere in business that in another lifetime would have been private, if not in the community, at least to the the larger world that happens to own a television set. What the research apparently indicates is that when an interloper encroaches, enough drama will ensue that the viewers keep tuning in to be a part of the fireworks.
Dirty laundry is willingly aired. There are judges who officiate at small-claims settlements. There is a show that trades the mother and wife in one family for the mother and wife in another, diametrically opposed family--both on the borderline of what is accepted as normal—to see what happens. There is a show that pits young beauties against each other for the hand in marriage of a man none of them really knows. There is even one that turn those tables and makes young men compete for a nubile beauty, just as it once was in real life, when everyone wasn’t made up for the camera and most people knew each other pretty well before making that leap.
And of course there are the commercials. Some chipper woman with an irritating voice and in a white uniform bleats to an innocent man nearby that he should buy something called “Progressive.” Whether it is insurance or breakfast food I know not because I can’t make head or tail of her sales pitch and I mute it whenever I hear the sound of her. And if you like your vacuum cleaner, you apparently can tell because it talks to you and dresses like you. Then there is one commercial in which the woman throws away her mop and it falls in love with a nearby bowling ball.
All this jabbering cannot be good for the brain. I suspect it has altered our way of using that organ, giving us all shorter attention spans and addling us for serious thought in the hope of manipulating us to buy more products. I also suspect that it works. It’s hard to live in a quiet house with all television removed.
Try as I might to tell myself I’m wasting time with this white-noise surrounding my life, I still don’t seem able to turn away. Television is a great train wreck with all the victims exposed, bruise for bruise, much as on a hospital dramatic show (like House, which I watch religiously, or Grey's Anatomy, which I've never seen. (You can't watch everything.)
I said before it's a form of escapism, but what would I want to escape from? I am independent, I go where I want to (which, often as not, is New York City) and I seldom see anyone I don’t choose to see. Television brings people I don’t want to know about right into my apartment and shows me perversions I would never have known about. It keeps me from reading, from writing, it does little to entertain and nothing to enlighten. But I'm fascinated by the manufactured reality of it all.
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