Archives for September 19, 2003

Too much, too much–and a hurricane to boot. I’ve had enough for one week. You must content yourself with a varied but essentially miscellaneous set of offerings today. I’ll post something more ambitious on Monday. Today’s topics, from brisk to torrential: (1) Puck in shades. (2) Dancers without money. (3) The Iran National Museum and its discontents. (4) An opening line I wish I’d written. (5) It must be Jelly, ’cause jam don’t swing like that. (6) The debut of “Today’s Installment” (part one of an enigmatic new daily feature). (7) The latest almanac entry.

Have a nice weekend. In the immortal words of J.J. Gittes, I plan to do as little as possible.

I went to Washington last Friday for the opening of Shakespeare in Hollywood, Ken Ludwig’s new play, at the Arena Stage. My review is in this morning’s
Wall Street Journal. Here’s how it starts:

I’ve been spending so much time in Manhattan aisle seats that I almost forgot there was life beyond the Hudson River. To recapture my sense of perspective, I took a train to Washington, home of the Arena Stage, a well-regarded regional theater-in-the-round that launched its new season last Friday with the world premiere of Ken Ludwig’s “Shakespeare in Hollywood,” a noisy, funny, thoroughly agreeable play about what happens when two of the Bard’s best-known characters take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and find themselves stuck on a soundstage.

“Shakespeare in Hollywood,” which runs through Oct. 19, is based on a real-life event that in retrospect seems almost as comically implausible as Mr. Ludwig’s script. In 1934, Max Reinhardt brought his lavish staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to the Hollywood Bowl. Jack Warner, of all people, got the idea of hiring the German

Artsjournal.com, which hosts “About Last Night,” linked to a hair-raising story
in Backstage about a recent NEA report
predicting that “not-for-profit dance companies may see as much as a 30% loss of earned income in the next few years, and even a heavier fall in contributions.” I haven’t yet seen the whole report (which is coyly titled “Raising the Barre”), but it clearly demands a closer look.

The “Leisure & Arts” page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an abridged version of a detailed briefing given last week by Col. Matthew Bogdanos, the Marine officer in charge of the official investigation of the looting of the Iraq National Museum. No matter what you think you think about this event, you need to go here
and read what Col. Bogdanos has to say about it.

In other news, The Minor Fall, the Major Lift, who is both cleverer and funnier than I am (that’s not news), actually managed to come up with a clever and funny way to explain why he wouldn’t be posting anything yesterday.

Meanwhile, Maud Newton passed along some famous and not-so-famous first sentences from novels (presumably they’re favorites of hers, though she didn’t say). This happens to be one of my own preferred games, so I am embarrassed to admit that she snagged one from a book I love by an author I love…and I never noticed it until now. Do you recognize it?

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.

If not, go here
and scroll down to behold the source of my shame.

One of my most loyal readers (who was kind enough to introduce me at the Mencken Lecture in Baltimore last week) has been after me to do this again, so…

Go here and click on “Wolverine Blues,” and if you have a RealAudio player you will be rewarded with three minutes of pure pleasure, courtesy of Jelly Roll Morton, Johnny Dodds, Baby Dodds, and the folks at www.redhotjazz.com.

Consider it my present to all of you for toughing out a long week with me.

1.

The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.

“But listen here, there ain’t anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and keep your dignity? The human frame just ain’t built that way.”

Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men