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May 2, 2004
TT: Consumables
I've been busy, but I've also had three very good days of what a friend of mine calls "arting," so I'm not complaining:- On Friday night I saw a press preview of Bryony Lavery's Frozen, which opens Tuesday at Circle in the Square after a successful off-Broadway run. I'll be reviewing it in next Friday's Journal. After the show, I went to ChikaLicious, an East Village dessert bar, accompanied by a friend whose first name happens to be (no fooling) Chika. Only in New York....
- The weather on Saturday afternoon was golden, so I strolled across Central Park to an East Side auction house, where I took a peek at a Hans Hofmann lithograph on which I've placed an absentee bid (the hammer falls on Tuesday). Cross your fingers--I covet this one desperately.
- From there I returned home to meet Sarah, who was in Manhattan all week to cover the Edgar Awards for "Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind," her must-read crime-fiction-and-more blog. I gave her a tour of the Teachout Museum and persuaded her to help me do a bit of manual labor (one of my prints had come unmounted, so we carried it to the neighborhood framer). We dined in the immediate vicinity, then taxied down to the Village Vanguard to hear the Jim Hall Trio. It was Sarah's first time hearing Hall, and she gave every sign of bedazzlement. As for me, I'd already heard the trio on Wednesday, but they were even better last night. (Incidentally, the set was recorded for CD release--go here to find out how to buy a copy.)
- Back at home again, I squared off the evening by watching the first hour of Brute Force, a 1947 Popular Front-style prison-break film noir directed by Jules Dassin, scored by Miklós Rózsa, and starring Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn. The script is ham-handed, with lots and lots and lots of root-cause speechmaking, but I still enjoyed it, and Rózsa's score, as always, was pointed and passionate.
- Today I returned to Broadway to see a press preview of Prymate, a new play by Mark Medoff, author of Children of a Lesser God, opening Wednesday at the Longacre. Again, I'll be reviewing it in Friday's Journal.
- In between all the aforementioned activities, I read Carrying the Fire, a memoir by Michael Collins, the member of the Apollo 11 crew who didn't land on the moon along with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (he was the command-module pilot). Carrying the Fire is all but forgotten, though it shouldn't be: Collins is the only American astronaut to have had a truly writerly sensibility, and he tells his story with flair.
- Now playing on iTunes: Benjamin Britten's divinely lyrical Hymn to St. Cecilia, recorded by Sir David Willcocks and the King's College Choir. I'm hoping it helps to waft me bedward, since I'm worn out (though happily so) and greatly in need of deep sleep.
See you Monday, unless I decide to take the day off, which is well within the realm of possibility. We'll just have to see.
Posted May 2, 2004 7:47 AM
