Archives for November 16, 2007

“The interesting thing about ‘Potato Head Blues,'” I said to John Pancake, the man who edited my old “Second City” column for the Washington Post, “is that it’s one of the few really popular Louis Armstrong recordings that has no vocal.” Then I blinked my eyes, realized that I was in bed, and looked at the clock. It was four-thirty in the morning, and John was nowhere to be seen.

I’d been dreaming about my Louis Armstrong biography, which I restarted on Wednesday after a six-week hiatus. The realization that Satchmo had invaded my dreams woke me all the way up. Instead of rolling over and trying to go back to sleep, I descended from my loft, booted up my MacBook, and started writing. Six hours later I was within spitting distance of wrapping up a not-quite-polished draft of the seventh chapter.

Do I like writing? Sometimes. Most of the time, to be perfectly honest, except that very often there are other things I’d rather be doing, like reading a book or taking a walk or hanging out with Mrs. T. But this morning was one of those blessed occasions when there was nothing else in the world I wanted to do but write. Hilary was fast asleep, my head was teeming with ideas, and no sooner did I start clicking away at the keyboard than I could do no wrong. I was, as jazz musicians say, in the pocket, and it felt good.

Needless to say, the person from Porlock eventually came calling. He always does. I had an eleven o’clock appointment with my trainer that I’d already rescheduled once, so at ten-thirty I sighed, shut down the shop, pulled on my sweats, and headed for the gym, thinking about Louis all the way there and all the way back.

Now I’m sitting at my desk, about to gun my mental engines once more. In my head it’s November 4, 1931, and Louis Armstrong is about to record Hoagy Carmichael’s “Star Dust.” For the next hour or so, my job will be to come up with exactly the right words to describe that amazing performance–and I’m soooo ready.

How lucky am I?

In my first post-strike Wall Street Journal drama column, I report on two new off-Broadway shows, The Glorious Ones and Things We Want:

Lincoln Center Theater is mounting “The Glorious Ones” in its cozy 299-seat downstairs house (Mark Lamos’ production of “Cymbeline,” which opens in two weeks, is playing in previews upstairs). It’s the most satisfying show that Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty have given us since “Ragtime,” which put them on the musical-comedy map a decade ago, and one of the things that makes it so pleasurable is that it makes no effort whatsoever to impress. Unlike “Dessa Rose,” their 2005 preach-a-thon about the evils of slavery, “The Glorious Ones” is a small-scale, fast-paced entertainment about the commedia dell’arte, the barnstorming outdoor theatrical troupes of 16th-century Italy whose bawdy improvised farces left a lasting mark on the later history of comedy. It is by turns touching and dirty–very, very dirty–and the rapid and unpredictable alternation of these two extremes is part of its charm….
Here’s the scorecard for “Things We Want,” Jonathan Marc Sherman’s new play: (1) Ethan Hawke was prominently featured in Tom Stoppard’s “The Coast of Utopia,” last season’s Big Event. (2) Zoe Kazan, Elia’s 24-year-old granddaughter, knocked out everyone who saw her last fall in the New Group’s revival of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” and not just because she took it all off, either. (3) Peter Dinklage, best known for such superior indie flicks as “The Station Agent” and “Living in Oblivion,” made an equally memorable impression in the title role of the Public Theater’s 2004 production of “Richard III.” To be sure, Mr. Hawke, the director, is nowhere to be seen on the far side of the proscenium, but his guiding hand is constantly in evidence in the New Group’s latest production, which is so smartly played and staged as to make its long list of shortcomings tolerable….

Rupert Murdoch, the Journal‘s owner-to-be, recently announced plans to make the subscription-only Online Journal free. The switch hasn’t been thrown yet, but given the fact that Murdoch has now made his intentions surpassingly clear, I’ll discontinue my usual weekly invitation to subscribe. Instead, go buy a copy of today’s paper to read the whole thing. (If you’re already a subscriber to the Online Journal, you’ll find my column here.)

“The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
Samuel Johnson, review of Soame Jenyns, “A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil” (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence)