Imagine an episode of All in the Family...


... stretched out into two long Acts, then subtract all the humor, sharply etched characterizations  (and professional comic timing), energy and vulgar vaudevillian slapstick (I mean that in a good way ) then proceeding at a glacial pace--add a triple double shot of "Let's talk in pseudo intellectual euphemisms about liberal guilt and entrenched white middle class cluelessness and pretend we're talking about other people who can't own up to their racist attitudes and prejudices until suddenly we realize that (gotcha!)  we're really talking about ourselves"  and you've got the (I shit you not) Pulitzer Prize Winning??!! play--Clybourne Park.    I'm still recovering from my battle with that Harbach book that rhymes with The Fart of Yielding...and just yesterday I resolved to resist the dark temptations of critical disdain, so I'll move on, and, oh the hell with it...some things are just irresistible...

TOP TEN REASONS TO SEE A BROADWAY SHOW

10. You’re tired of your old car and if you park it near 12^th Ave. during the show, chances are it will be stolen and you can collect the insurance.

9. Your wife's friend’s  sister-in-law was talking to a neighbor who said her daughter’s roommate “simply adored” it.

8. It’s starring that actress, what's her name?  You know who I mean...she played the adorable Parlor Maid who married the cook on that British show on PBS called... oh, c'mon you know the one. 

7. The Lighting Designer won a Tony.

6. It's the only opportunity you may have to compare and contrast the subtle differences in strength and toxicity among a wide range of brands of ladies perfumes.

5. The Theatre lobby features a newly restored mural depicting the Rape of Persephone as performed by Sarah Bernhardt. 

6. Jonathan Schwartz said the show was “… absolutely wonderful — and almost as thrilling as the time I passed a roll of toilet paper under the stall door to Sinatra in the Copacabana Men’s room.”

5. They have those Super-Size boxes of Jujy Fruits at the snack bar. (Note: remember to go to ATM beforehand so you'll still have enough cash for the $8.75 cup of club soda) 

4. Your doctor told you it’s best to sit upright with your knees pressed together and as close to your face as possible.

3. Show ends before 10 pm—leaving plenty of time to catch 2^nd half of West Coast  playoff game.

2. Your wife wants to go,  and your Mantra for the last 20 years has been:
 " Happy Wife, Happy Life." 

1. Someone told you that “ The Theatre is Dead”, so you’re just going to pay your respects. 

Speaking of those who wish they had taken a pass on that night at the Theatre...

A Lincoln photo I hadn't seen before...dated 1860 by William Church

I find images of Lincoln more moving and evocative than those of any other individual I can think of.  (Louis Armstrong is a close second.)   Of course it's about everything one associates with the man, but somehow I think if I were to somehow be able to erase all that from my mind, I would still find him a striking subject.  And the changes in his face and demeanor over time are a graphic representation of that wrenching era etched in flesh.

And some favorite Honest Abe quotes:

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens

In response to a request for a "sentiment and an autograph:"

--Lincoln sent the following.

Dear Madam: 

When you ask from a stranger that which is of interest only to yourself, always enclose a stamp. There's your sentiment, and here's your autograph. 

A. Lincoln

Sorry folks...please forgive errors of omission, spelling formatting, grammar (though I've managed to clean up most after much struggle)...I can't seem to master the new system and it's driving me to drink.   Skoal!

Having written some harsh (and maybe even snarky?--oy, I hate doing that) words in recent posts about a certain popular novel and a (in a post to come) highly touted play -I thought I'd attempt to balance the scales by spreading the word about some of the good stuff.  And I hope it  serves to remind me in the future that the dark temptations of the rant (oh, but it's such fun) are never as rewarding as the bright joys of the rave...

I wrote previously about Michael Malone and just finished this second novel from the Trilogy that begins with Uncivil Seasons and concludes with First Lady.  Some critics have called it " To Kill A Mockingbird" for grown-ups.  But I think that's a bit glib and mis-leading.  Malone is too smart and aware of life's insurmountable injustices to paint his canvas in such clearly defined brushstrokes of right and wrong or good and evil.  And though he has a Dickensian knack for manipulating  emotions  for dramatic effect--he more often succeeds by virtue of his clear-headed and deeply moral humanist vision.  He's also has an irreverent wit and a sharp eye and ear for the telling detail--which he gives to his lead character Cuddy Mangum--the most unlikely small town Southern Police Chief you could imagine. Think Faulkner with a sly grin and...eminently more readable. 

Go figure right?  But it's really good.  Hard to swallow that he could be the real deal with pen and ink as well as with skillet and sauce, but what can I say, he cooked up a real corker here.  And it's  a hoot of a tale. Young guy working in Italian restaurant in Little Italy, trying to go straight despite Mob family history and ties, gets in a jam, is painted into a corner by  the Feds, works with a Chef who's a junkie, sleeps with a girl who's tougher than he is and his mobbed up Uncle is just as likely to whack him as hug him.  It's like Prizzi's Honor, but better, and with a lot of food preparation.  It's got real soul, and I'm a sucker for: "... It's over man...Fucking fried calamari?...Have you ever tried it? I don't want to slink outta here at the end of the day, wondering who's gonna get diarrhea...I hate that...They need a chef, they get some moke from the neighborhood in, some guy too stupid to steal cars..."

Was thinking about this show after seeing Clybourne Park (more on that soon) and wondering if I ever saw anything on Broadway that addressed the issue of race and class with any reality bite to it.  And I remembered that this one did.  It came and went after only a four month run on Broadway.  I thought it was terrific. Actually, thought it was a masterpiece. My memory of it is almost like it was a dream I had and couldn't get out of my head, which I  imagine is a  sign of something special.  Kushner's lyrics are unusually sharp and smart and  moving. The entire concept is different from the standard musical fare-- and Jeanine Tesori's score is a revelation.  It's not a "Broadway" score.  It's a blend of Gospel, Blues, Jazz and New Orleans funk mixed with some Motown inspired harmonies sung with Carla Thomas true grit.   I also remember that I cried  at least twice and had a hard time stopping at the final curtain.

Full disclosure.  I know the author ( by way of good buddy and generous patron of the arts--Doctor A.M.)  That said, and all subjective affection and familiarity aside,  Second Hand Smoke is a great book. So is Thane's Short Story collection Elijah Visible and non-fiction The Myth of Moral Justice. He's  currently working on a non-fiction book concerning "Revenge" --which as he pointed out recently is the same thing as "Justice." Hmmm...? I look forward to  further elaboration.  He's a frequent editorial contributor  to The NY Times and many  other pubs and a particularly salient observer  of issues pertaining to Jewish history, law and Middle East politics.

Thane's latest, The Stranger Within Sarah Stein is his first foray into the "Young Adult" market.  It's a contemporary urban Alice Through The Looking Glass magical/realism fable that plays a fanciful game of hide 'n seek with identity, race, class, religion, The Holocaust, art, marriage, parenting, and it's all craftily patched together in a crazy quilt of a plot that moves swiftly and dramatically to a "race against time" climax with a twist on the traditional fairy tale ending.  I asked him if he approached writing this book with the Young Adult reader in mind, and he said that he didn't--but I suspect that, unconsciously perhaps, he harnessed his instinctive understanding of the powerful and heightened role imagination plays in navigating the bumpy road through adolescence.  I think all that awful Vampire themed junk flooding the market is being served up by dint of that universal truth, and it's a pity that the  tastier and more nutritious soul food from writers like Thane isn't more prominently featured on the mass market menu.

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Dear Blogspot or Google or whoever you are who "Improved" the Blogger Workstation,

Just a short note to say Thanks, but no thanks.  I was initially seduced by all the shiny new tools with all their sleek high-tech style, but after a week spent trying to simply write and edit my blog, I've concluded that your improvements are a big pain in the butt.  For every new option, there's a restriction.  For every convenience and time saving process, there's a price to be paid in limited creative freedom.  I don't want everything to be automatic, I want manual control.

And what's the use of the "Preview" option if the Preview looks nothing at all like the final post?  In short, the new system sucks.  Do you expect me to learn HTML in order to make corrections? Are you friggin nuts?   Please reinstate the old system (call it "Blogspot Classic" if that makes your marketing people happy) and give me back control of my blog!

Talk about High Concept?


Struggling screenwriter (isn't that redundant?) passes the time writing fake letters to famous people in the guise of an eager and curious child.  The letters are pitch-perfect and the replies are touching, funny and revealing...you can read more at:  


http://boingboing.net/2010/03/10/little-billys-letter.html

A few examples for the link averse:

To : Robert Shapiro--One  of O.J. Simpson's "dream team"  defense lawyers

...and to the office of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles

and if you want to know how Shapiro and the Church replied...

follow link above.

 Chopin didn’t bother, he just identified them by genre and number.

Most other composers did likewise.  "Let's see, this is my fifth symphony and I wrote it in C-minor,  so I think I'll call it  "Symphony #5 in C-minor".

Occasionally, some descriptive word would get attached to a piece of music. That's why we have a "Moonlight" sonata-- but that isn't the actual "name" of the piece.

Classical composers sometimes wrote program music, created to evoke something actual or metaphorical— such as “Pictures at an Exhibition”  and  “Night on Bald Mountain” 

But that's the classical world --for fun in the way of Titling titillation...Punk and Country is where you'll find the real motherlode... but that would be too easy, so I'm gonna dig in my memory bank as well as look around the Jazz scene and other related neighborhoods...

I always thought the Miles Davis tune So What was a perfect title.  It perfectly suits the man who wrote it as well as the direct and straightforward simplicity of the tune itself.

Phil Woods wrote a tune entitled Huk2E --The only tune I know of that references the act of spitting.  A few more I like: 

This I Dig of You - Hank Mobley.  

And what if I don't? - Herbie Hancock

I heard you twice the first time- Branford Marsalis

Your goatee gets on my nerves (not to mention the moustache) - Milosc (Polish jazz group)

There's nothing smart about being stupid - Sonny Fortune

 Theme from ' The Theme From' --Herbie Mann

Charles Mingus  never missed a chance to brew his titles dark  and strong. (color-coded because double spacing option is being uncooperative)

All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother; The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife are Some Jive Ass Slippers; Don’t Be Afraid, the Clown’s Afraid Too.

Les McCann penned:

A little 3/4 for God & co. ;

Gone on and get that church;
Someone stole my Chitlins;

Vu Jade (the feeling of never having been there before);

Price you gotta pay to be free.

 Mother of Invention--Age 2

 A small sampling of Frank Zappa might include: 

What Kind of Girl do you Think We Are?

Sheik Yerbouti (Album Name)

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace 

In-a-Gadda-Stravinsky

Orrin Hatch on Skis

Winos Do No March

Variations on the Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression (musicians must love that one)

We're Only in it for the Money

Why does it hurt when I Pee?

Don't eat the Yellow Snow

The always eclectic  George Clinton. 

Free your mind and your ass will follow;

There is nothing before me but thang;

If you don't like the effects, don't produce the cause.

 Mose Allison  wrote dozens of doozies:


Somebody Gonna Have to Move;
Your Mind is On Vacation (And Your Mouth is Working Overtime);
Your Molecular Structure;
The Getting Paid Waltz; 

Monsters of the Id;

You Can't Push People Around.

I'm a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama With My Honolulu Mama Doin' Those Beat-o Beat-o Flat-on-my-Seat-o Hirohito Blues

 --- Hoagy Carmichael

and the Ozzie Nelson (yes, that Ozzie Nelson) classic - I'm Looking for a Guy Who Plays Alto and Baritone, Doubles on the Clarinet and Wears a Size 37 Suit

and to wrap it up...... here's Bonnie Raitt (in honor of my Sis Debby and Hubby Bill who're going to one of her upcoming concerts)  doin one of my favorite Mose Allison tunes...with Taj Mahal on Blues Harp...


Damn...they won't let me embed it!  Sorry bout that...but here's the link. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qABGqLfOiAw

Note:  Still trying to master the new Blogger tools...sorry for any formatting sloppiness, but try as I might, I can't seem to figure out how to correct.

Faulkner once observed that “work” is the only thing we can do (other than sleep) for any extended period of time. We can’t eat or drink or have sex for 8 hours straight (not that some people don’t try) but we can work.

The first law of thermodynamics states that when work is done to a system, the system's energy state changes by the same amount of the work input. This equates work and energy. And energy is the ability that a physical system has in order to do work on other physical systems.

I don’t pretend to fully (or even partially) understand the exact science of it, but the idea that work and energy are synonymous appeals to me. It broadens the concept to embrace the idea that whenever we are expending energy, we are working –which includes sitting on our butts worrying, daydreaming, meditating, watching, listening—as well when we’re toiling, playing sports, games, music, tending our gardens etc. However, that’s not to say that all expenditures of energy are productive…but that’s another word and another subject entirely.

Tolstoy said, "One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love…"

and...

Freud is purported to have said that the goal of psychotherapy is to allow the patient to love and to work

The love part is pretty easy for most people to get, even if it’s understood only in a romantic or sexual sense. But the work part of it is a bit more subtle… and interesting, if only because it gets so much less attention than the former.

“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.”
Albert Einstein




















Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt and dance like nobody’s watching.
--Satchel Paige






“Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need”
Voltaire





The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so they would turn over by themselves.
--W.C Fields







But writing about work is too much like work…
so let’s just look at pictures—of people at work.

Look Carefully

Al Smith ran to the waltzing beat of The Sidewalks of New York.  Roosevelt had the snappy Happy Days Are Here Again. For Truman it was I'm Just Wild About Harry, and Kennedy beamed that Beacon Hill smile to High Hopes. 

Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list for many of the others going back to Andrew Jackson all the way through:  Mike Huckabee: More Than A Feeling by Boston (Tom Scholz of Boston asked Huckabee to stop using the song) 

The strangest choice in the bunch  is probably the one for Ross Perot. He chose Patsy Cline's Crazy in 1992

But what is Romney’s song?  All I can find online is that he's been torturing the ears of his followers at every rally and speech with the bland and faux Springsteenesque Kid Rock  Anthem Born Free.  

So, encouraged by the belief that the Romney campaign is still looking to Name that Tune for their man, I submit the following Gilbert and Sullivan inspired ditty for their consideration. 

"I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in.  That's the America I love.  

-Mitt Romney (January 2012)

( I am the very model of ) 
A Presidential Candidate 

I am the very model of a presidential candidate

can light up any room where loaded people pay ten Grand a plate

I know the Wall Street barons who like me are steeped in privilege

And guys who blithely sail on yachts made possible by funds that hedge

I come from rugged pioneers who founded their own settlement

Where folks worked hard and feared their god and beverages that might ferment

Where marriages gave men the choice, and women didn’t have a voice

I am the very man for whom America should now rejoice

The cynics say I change my views and pander, lie and obfuscate

But in The Prince Niccolò said "to rule you must equivocate"
The game that we call politics is one in which you must rely

upon the how and not the who or what or where or when or why.

I get up in the morning and I shave and dress conservative

To look the part of one who hopes to act as a preservative

of all that we among the flock, with class --and I mean Class A stock

require to stay rich while keeping congress in non-stop gridlock.

I know I said "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King"

And said a bunch of other stuff which didn't have the truth of ring

But sometimes I get all mixed up and words start coming out all strange

but vote for me and I'll make sure that that's something I will that change

To run the nation properly you must have grit and diligence

the kind that comes from ancestry with U.S. roots and permanence

Obama is a transient whose mom lived off the continent

His Dad I hear just disappeared and drank till all incompetent

  

I'm very good at shaking hands and kissing babies on the cheeks

I’ve learned the names of foreign lands and nearly all the Saudi Sheiks

I’m married to a loyal lass who stays at home to copulate--

With me --and ain't it big of me (bigamy?) as one hot hunky candidate. 

I speak my mind regardless of the facts or truths empirical

Pay no heed to my critics or when SNL’s satirical 

I always follow Mormon law, I stand before my faith in awe

Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you that I have no flaw.

My daddy said to me “Son if you dream of white house occupance...

You must pay heed to folks who live in houses stocked in opulence

Ideas and law and policy may be what makes democracy

But money talks and money wins--God Bless our great plutocracy.”

I’ve paid my dues in wingtip shoes in conference rooms in every state

I’ve wheeled and dealed and made a mint cause baby “I communicate”

I never lack for confidence, can straddle just 'bout any fence

My mojo is the Quid Pro Quo --and you thought it was temperance?

In Massachusetts I was known for innovative policies

My record shows successive blows to wasteful old bureaucracies

My Universal Healthcare law, the one I thought would never pass

Has now returned to haunt me as it bites me in my great big ass

My moment has arrived and now I’m ready for the final test

The GOP will soon choose me and then with Morman zeal n' zest

Just fill er up, dog’s in the crate, he’s on the roof— no need to wait

Here comes the very model of a presidential candidate.