Archives for July 6, 2006

The Georgia Shakespeare Festival is located in a dullish stretch of suburbia that is all but devoid of restaurants. I know this because I checked out of my hotel at noon on Sunday, went looking for brunch, and found nothing but a Piccadilly Cafeteria, three of the Waffle Houses that are ubiquitous as telephone poles in the Deep South, and a half-dozen fast-food joints. Opting for nostalgia over efficiency, I chose the cafeteria, though not without double-checking the time in order to make sure I got in ahead of the after-church crowd. Southern cafeterias start to fill up at a quarter past twelve on Sundays, and by 12:30 you can’t count on getting a table.

I don’t know when I last ate at a southern-style cafeteria. When I was a boy in Smalltown, U.S.A., my family used to go straight from the Murray Lane Baptist Church to a restaurant called Two Tony’s, but that was an all-you-can-eat buffet, the kind of place where you served yourself from endless steam tables, pausing only to tell the white-hatted man at the end of the line whether you wanted roast beef or baked ham. At a cafeteria the cheerful ladies behind the counter fill your plate for you, and the only thing on which you get seconds is your soft drink.

Time was when such establishments were nearly as easy to find below the Mason-Dixon Line as Waffle Houses. They’re still far from uncommon, but you don’t see so many of them nowadays. Baby boomers prefer to be served by a waitress, or to pick up their food at a drive-through window. I’d guess there were a hundred people seated in the dining room of the Piccadilly Cafeteria on Peachtree Road on Sunday at twelve-thirty, all but a dozen of whom were either gray-haired or bald. (I was about to say that I was the youngest person there, but alas, I wasn’t. I find it hard to remember that I’m fifty years old.)

Times change and so do tastes, but the Piccadilly chain has yet to acknowledge the evolution of the American palate. I can’t put it any better than does the company’s Web site:

Walk into any Piccadilly and you’ll swear it’s your mother’s kitchen. The first thing you’ll notice are the friendly smiles, followed immediately by a huge selection of your favorite comfort foods. Delicious fried chicken, succulent roast beef, tasty fried shrimp, all ready to enjoy. Choose from our wide variety of garden fresh home-style vegetables like carrot souffl

– Mr. Zayamsbury reflects on writer’s block:

When I feel like I’ve got nothing left, when every word I write is crap, utterly disconnected from the world, disengaged, flat, superfluous, the only way out for me is to write anyway. The muse isn’t a discrete entity, she’s mutable–sometimes a lover to be seduced, sometimes an animal to be stalked, sometimes a prisoner to be restrained, sometimes a parent who comes to you love in hand, and sometimes she’s nowhere to be found, and the only thing that can bring her back is to rip yourself open word by word, to offer sacrifice by the ferocious act of merely being there.

Inspiration is for civilians.

Spoken like a professional.

– Ms. Maccers speaks dark wisdom:

Ah yes, the things I should have known when I was wrinkle-free and still thought a pension was something one marries. Things like never trust a woman who wears too much eye make-up or who surrounds her workspace with photos of herself. Or a man who claims to love his wife.

We tolerate each other, is all. Anything else is fantasy.

Yikes! Double yikes!

– I wish I’d said this:

Blogs are great, blah blah blah. Why, when there is an article about blogs, is it always about political blogs? Why is it that when the democratizing nature of blogs is mentioned it is always political blogs? Why does the press make it seem like there are political blogs and then everything else? And why is the everything else often implied to be drivel? Why is news about blogs that are not political confined to the book pages, the tech pages, etc? Why am I surprised?

– Are books too long? Mr. BuzzMachine thinks so, and points you to an eloquent concurrence by Susan Tomes:

Unlimited cyberspace will allow people to say as much as they need, or to publish a tiny poem which wings its way round the world in a moment without the need for 125 other poems to bulk up the volume.

The point is, surely, that the removal of “sizist” constraints should be liberating. In cyberspace, authors need not pad out, or cut down, what they want to say. It should be a welcome chance to use just the right number of words. Though whether we can find our readers without bookshops is another matter.

(Incidentally, Ms. Tomes also happens to be a wonderful pianist who can be heard to excellent effect on this CD.)

– Mr. Anecdotal Evidence reflects sadly on the bestsellers of yesteryear:

Is anything sadder than yesterday’s bestsellers? Once they were shiny and unblemished, promising pleasure without risk, at once virginal and passionate, like the latest actress or new cars in the showroom. Now, ranked on dim shelves, they look faded not entirely resigned to being forgotten. New books are odorless. Old bestsellers seem shamed by the must they emit when you riffle their pages. They remind me of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard….

– Mr. Something Old, Nothing New remembers Frank’s Place, a short-lived TV series recalled with affection by all who saw it, myself very much included. (Follow the links.)

– I’m normally no fan of Theodor Adorno, but Mr. Think Denk has posted a long, arrestingly intelligent excerpt from Adorno’s Late Style in Beethoven that is right on the money. Here’s how it starts:

The maturity of the late works of significant artists does not resemble the kind one finds in fruit. They are, for the most part, not round, but furrowed, even ravaged. Devoid of sweetness, bitter and spiny, they do not surrender themselves to mere delectation….

Read the whole thing, please.

– OGIC and I find ourselves in some decidedly odd company here (though it’s always fun to hang out with Maud).

– I ran into these guys on the street the other day and did a triple take. They’re way cool.

– Anyone who read Cheaper by the Dozen in childhood must have wondered ever since what the motion-study films made by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth actually looked like. Wonder no more: you can view excerpts from the Gilbreth films here.

– Feeling hungry? Go here and salivate. (I especially like the pithy discussion of the Ketchup Question.)

– Feeling blue? Take a look at this video of a live performance by Duke Ellington (thank you, Mr. House of Mirth). It’s the apotheosis of urbanity.

– Still got the blues? Go here and amuse yourself. I guarantee results.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Aug. 6)

– Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)

– The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

– The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here)

– Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

– The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:

– Faith Healer* (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 30)

– Susan and God (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, extended through July 30)

“They all believe that today or tomorrow Hitler will start the war, but I’m not so sure. What good would a war do him, since whatever he wants they bring him on a silver platter? The Americans and the whole democratic world have lost the most valuable possession–character. There’s a form of tolerance that’s worse than syphilis, worse than murder, worse than madness.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shosha