About Last Night

Good news! Last Halloween, Cinetrix and the ‘Fesser prudently clipped and saved the Onion list I alluded to below, and have sent it along in its entirety:

Top Halloween Costumes, Women 18-34

1. Sexy French maid

2. Sexy cat

3. Sexy witch

4. Sexy hobo

5. Sexy ketchup bottle

6. Sexy prostitute

7. Sexy Mother Teresa

8. Sexy bus driver

9. Sexy Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle

What was life like, anyway, before the Onion? Can anyone remember those dark, mirthless days? I don’t even want to try.

Dear TT:

Please share! Your thoughts on the film version of The Human Stain, that is. It’s part of my long-term moviegoing plan, but not particularly high on the list. A good word from you will bump it up a few places, while your disfavor could give me an unimpeachable excuse to give it a miss until video. So I’m eager to hear what you thought.

I also took in a movie among the costumed tonight. The women mostly seemed to subscribe to the Onion school of dressing up: sexy witch, sexy nurse, sexy cat, sexy hobo…. (Alas, I could not find a link to the old Onion list of the top Halloween costumes for women 18-34–but I do have some advice: don’t google “sexy hobo.”) The clear standout was a guy with an expertly drawn phrenological map on his shaved head. The jury’s out on whether it was a sexy phrenologically mapped head.

As for the movie, that was the suitably scary 28 Days Later. Not spooky, mind you, but scary in that special way reserved for rapidly traveling viruses that make the people you love into flesh-eating zombies. Believe it or not, I enjoyed myself, especially during some early scenes that let you feast your eyes on an utterly deserted but mostly intact London, a great unruined ruin. The real saving grace, though, was that this flesh-eating zombie movie had a sense of humor, as did my gallant companion and the audience at large.

So, any zombie action in your movie?

To those who inquired about my damaged digit, it is improving, slowly but surely. The dressing gets smaller every day, sort of like the bandage on Jack Nicholson’s nose in Chinatown. Too bad I don’t have Faye Dunaway to kiss it and make it better. (Well, maybe not–she is pretty weird in that movie.)

Don’t get your hopes up. I just finished writing a book review for the Los Angeles Times, and now I’m about to dress and depart for Sotheby’s, where I will be bidding on an etching by an artist-to-be-named-later. After that, I’m going to see The Human Stain with one of my musician friends. After that, I’m coming home and crashing, but good.

Yes, some blogging may take place in the interstices, but not necessarily. I mean, we posted ourselves silly yesterday. What do you want, blood? (You got that earlier this week, anyway.)

P.S. Henceforth Maud (who was really good on the Evelyn Waugh centenary) will be known around these parts as the Pint-Sized Polemicist. Indeed, she is a bonny wee thing, not unlike Kristin Chenoweth, who stole my heart at the Gershwin Theatre the other night. And can she sing? Who cares?

“I think

Charles Johnson has a cure for what ails our schools’ creative writing programs, and it’s not for the faint of heart (link via Bookslut). His epigraph from John Gardner gives you an idea of what he’s about: “If our furniture was as poorly made as our fiction, we would always be falling onto the floor.”

Shirley Hazzard’s Great Fire, about which I am officially excited, gets a nuanced review from Judith Shulevitz at Slate: “The Great Fire is a lyrical rather than social novel, its richest writing reserved for landscapes as seen in the fresh, full light of day.”

My personal plan to whip through Transit of Venus en route to The Great Fire has been slowed up by the arrival of some books I’m reviewing, as well as my compulsion to read most of Hazzard’s wondrous sentences two or three times each. In this regard, and surely no other, she reminds me a little of Barry Hannah. His haywire Southern Gothic plots tend to baffle me, but his sentences are stunning enough to propel me through his novels all by themselves. (I’m at work now, but I’ll give you some examples next time I blog from home.)

I reviewed Wicked, a new Broadway musical based on Gregory Maguire’s postmodern version of the “Wizard of Oz” story, in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s the gist:

Broadway’s got itself a great big expensive new musical, complete with smoke, mirrors and (no fooling) flying monkeys. Kristin Chenoweth finally has a full-fledged star part that’s worthy of her. Stephen Schwartz has written a ballad with legs. And Joel Grey, God bless him, is back on stage. So what’s not to like? Not much, really. “Wicked,” which opened last night at the Gershwin Theatre, isn’t perfect, but it’s more than good enough to run for a decade or two. If it doesn’t please you, you’re too tough to please….

Critics aren’t supposed to get crushes, but I’ve got it bad for Kristin Chenoweth, a teeny blond bombshell who makes perkiness palatable. Ever since she first blew into town with the 1999 revival of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” Broadway buffs have been waiting for Ms. Chenoweth to land a bona fide star part in a successful show. Well, this is it. She sings like a cherub on uppers and acts like a damned good actress, and Mr. Schwartz has written her a show-stopping comic turn, “Popular,” which will doubtless be heard on the next Tony telecast.

No link (gnashing of teeth), but you can read the whole thing, including my short, scathing remarks on Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, by picking up a copy of Friday’s Journal and turning to the “Weekend Journal” section. Do, please–the Journal covers the arts really well.

(1) Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Ravel Piano Concerto in G (slow movement)

(2) Frank Sinatra, Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry (1958 version, from Only the Lonely)

(3) Steely Dan, Monkey in Your Soul

(4) Gerry Mulligan, Lonely Town

(5) Stan Getz, Blood Count (dedicated to my damaged digit)

(6) Julian Bream, Britten Nocturnal

And so…good night.