Archives for August 2006

Is there anything more pathetic than a houseguest with the sniffles? I caught my current cold while visiting a woman with a chronic illness of considerable gravity who nonetheless went out of her way to make over me. As she brought me my umpteenth mug of hot tea, I was seized with a convulsion of guilt and told her, “You must think it’s pretty lame of me to be lying on the couch and whining like this, considering how sick you are.”

“Actually, it feels worse to have a cold, at least in the short run,” she replied. “When you’re really sick, your point of view changes–it gets easier to cope, somehow. So shut up and drink your tea.”

This reminded me of how I felt when I was in the hospital last December. I was desperately scared until I picked up the phone and dialed 911–and then, all at once, I wasn’t. It was like throwing a switch. From that moment on, I was completely calm. You may not understand what I’m talking about unless you’ve had a similar experience, but as soon I told the operator to send an ambulance, I knew things were out of my hands, and for the first time in weeks, I relaxed.

Needless to say, my host’s reassurances didn’t make me feel any less guilty, but they didn’t stop me from drinking my tea, either. Alas, I couldn’t indulge myself for very long, even with her wholehearted approval, for this was one of my three-deadline weeks. On Monday I wrote a four-thousand-word essay on John Hammond for Commentary. On Tuesday I returned to New York, writing my drama column for Friday’s Wall Street Journal on the train from Hartford to Penn Station. Yesterday I wrote my “Sightings” column for the Saturday Journal. All this was a bit much for a middle-aged man with a bad cold, but I had to grin and bear it, so I did. As James Burnham liked to say, if there’s no alternative, there’s no problem.

I spent Wednesday evening slumped on the couch, swilling tea and watching Howard Hawks’ Hatari! It’s not one of the master’s best movies: the plot is all but nonexistent, and the way Hawks handles his female characters tips over into full-fledged self-parody. One of them is named Brandy, the other Dallas, which tells you just about everything you need to know. Be that as it may, Hatari! turned out to be well suited to my modest aesthetic demands, for it jogs along amusingly for two and a half hours, the Tanganyikan scenery is soothing to the eye, and Henry Mancini’s score, which makes extensive and imaginative use of African percussion, is great fun. (This is the film for which “Baby Elephant Walk” was written.) No sooner had I shipped “Sightings” off to the Journal than I sent out for a pizza, turned on the TV, and left the rest to John Wayne. Thanks, Duke!

I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything today, and I’m not gonna. Friday, alas, is different: I’ll be catching a train to Washington, D.C., first thing in the morning, picking up a Zipcar at Union Station, and driving from there to Staunton, Virginia, where I’ll spend a day and a half watching Shenandoah Shakespeare perform Othello, As You Like It, and Macbeth. On Sunday I return to Washington (stopping along the way at the Pope-Leighey House) to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company‘s new production of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. I’ll be back in New York on Monday night.

That, if I may say so, is one damn long weekend, so if you don’t hear from me between tomorrow and next Wednesday, do not adjust your set. I know, I know, it’s only a cold, but in the immortal words of Lili von Shtupp, I’m not a wabbit–I need some west!

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. 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)

– The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, 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 THIS WEEKEND:

– Indian Blood (drama, G, reviewed here, closes Saturday)

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

– Pig Farm (comedy, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here, closes Sunday)

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

“It was sad how the fact of not being able to share a joke separated one from people. Separated, of course, was too strong a word, but it created a frontier, a water-shed for experience, instead of a valley. Failure to see the same things as funny often meant a general failure to see eye to eye, because humour was common ground where the high-brow and the low-brow, the rich and the poor, could meet without self-consciousness.”

L.P. Hartley, The Sixth Heaven

Laryngitis.

Later.

(Imagine a big sick frog intoning those two words and you’ll get the idea.)

UPDATE: My condition has evolved. I now sound like the subject of my next book.

“He played Franck’s Prelude, Aria and Finale. The noble, declamatory music with its military stride and confident accent marched through the room, filling it with flags and cheering crowds, a gallant expedition setting out in the morning of life to win a spiritual prize. Eustace thought he knew why Victor chose this piece; not only was it, superficially at any rate, the very breath of encouragement, but it expressed all those sentiments which he, Victor, so sedulously kept out of his daily manner. Here, at the piano, protected by the anonymity of art, he could walk in old heroic traces without being betrayed. Sir John was right to say that he played like a professional. He had the evenness of touch, the restrained, impersonal approach to emotion; he did not hurry when the music was easy, and slow up when it was difficult. He could let go without letting himself go.”

L.P. Hartley, The Sixth Heaven

So Terry’s got laryngitis and I’ve got my parents in town. Advantage Ms. OGIC, by a very large margin, but in terms of blogging output, nobody wins. I’ll leave you, however, with a few good links:

– Robert Archambeau is very acute, not to mention downright hilarious, dissecting audiences at poetry readings. Poetry readings get a bad rap, he admits; but “what if a big part of the problem with poetry readings isn’t a matter of what’s up on stage, but a matter of what’s down in the seats?” (Via Dan Green).

– Peter Suderman argues that “classic TV” is not just a myth, and that the DVD medium overcomes the precise obstacles previously cited by my illustrious co-blogger to even the best series television attaniing the status of bona fide narrative art.

– Not a link but an observation. There’s been much ado about Marisha Pessl’s cause c

Man at work. Totally swamped. Still coughing (but getting better). See you Thursday.

“Cramer said, ‘I’m not a fool.’

“Wolfe nodded again. ‘We all feel like that occasionally. The poison of conceit. It’s all right if you keep an antidote handy.'”

Rex Stout, Over My Dead Body