CitySpecific

Same first name, new home

2010-08-06T00:18:00.000-04:00

Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare in the Park

2010-07-07T00:40:00.003-04:00

It was the hottest night of the year, and the relief provided by the occasional cool breeze was fleeting at best, but I made up my mind to accept it, especially once the sweat stopped dripping, and in the end, it was amazing to be back in the Delacorte, seeing a full production starring a certified legend and a graceful up-and-comer, uninterrupted by rain or too many sounds from the busy streets. The gentle but persistent heat, the well-staged lighting, the brooding atmospheric music, the basin of water at the center of the stage in the second half, all added up to an enveloping feeling I loved, being outside in summer participating in one of those communal activities that makes the city great. And it was free.

Angels, wings sold separately

2010-06-15T22:39:00.008-04:00

Eric Whitacre's Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, whose concert version received its New York premiere tonight at Carnegie Hall (presented by DCINY), is a cannily crafted mash-up. Mix together quasi-Biblical fantasy narrative, electronic beats, martial-arts dueling, cinematic choral writing, solidly written musical-theater numbers for an ensemble of seven soloists, and, yes, some derivative dialogue, and you might get something like what we saw tonight. It's the closest I've ever come to seeing a video-game soundtrack staged live. And thus, I found the experience fun but not very emotional. The world depicted is sort of like Lord of the Flies, if they'd had more organized leaders in the group. The heroine of the show, Exstasis, played by Whitacre's wife, Hila Plitmann, seeks to break free from the order imposed by Logos and find the wings that were plucked from the children years earlier when their parents locked them inside a fortress to protect them from the darkness outside and prevent them from flying away. The lyrics are imbued with themes of flight vs. strength, freedom vs. authority, of being alone, and keeping things together, and they are lyrical. It wasn't hard to imagine visual representations of many of the scenes. (I understand the more fully staged productions of this work have included Japanese-style anime.) Sadly, too much of the spoken dialogue is the kind you've heard so many times before in cheaply written cartoons and subpar action movies. That said, there was a charm and humor to many of the simple lines uttered by bass-baritone Rodolfo Nieto in the character of Gravitas. Overall, the soundscape Whitacre creates helps to make you forget about the shortcomings; the 400+ member chorus on stage tonight added to the epic feeling the show seeks to create.

This one-off concert performance elicited two standing ovations from an audience filled by many who knew the choristers, and the musical motif introduced by "What If" was catchy enough to inspire some whistling on the way out. The work did run for several weeks as a fully staged musical at the Boston Court Theatre in Pasadena in the summer of 2007, and won accolades from Variety for pulling off "stunning effects" that transcended the 99-seat house. Tonight's performance was less than 90 minutes without intermission, while that production ran two and a half hours, which leaves me wondering what was cut. I can see this piece finding an audience if it were to mount another long run, and it definitely deserves respect for its craftsmanship, even if I was left a little earthbound by the experience.

Whitacre on a grander scale

2010-06-14T18:50:00.004-04:00

That Eric Whitacre concert performance I mentioned last month is tomorrow. The details: "Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings" (concert version - New York Premiere) at Carnegie Hall, 8pm, Tuesday June 15, 2010. I'll report back on my impressions within a few days.

Both sides of the moat

2010-06-03T21:36:00.014-04:00

Before I lived here, I never stayed here very long. I don't think I ever spent the night in a New York City hotel room as a kid. There wasn't much reason to, as long as we had extended family living less than an hour away. And of course, this city was a more dangerous place when I was growing up, which I don't doubt might've had something to do with the desire not to spend too much time here, beyond the obligatory tourist spots. I don't remember the city providing much of an emotional pull, either. As a little kid who drew skyscrapers on graph paper and devised new transit systems, I had an interest, no doubt, but not the insistent kind of whisper that I know some people have about this place, before this place becomes theirs.

I'd probably trace my desire to live here first to the experience of another city: Manchester, England. Studying abroad there was the first time I gained the confidence needed to navigate an urban center on my own, and feel like the hubbub and noise was willing to open up and let me in and not crush me whole. Granted, Manchester is no Big Smoke or Big Apple, but most of the same elements are there on a smaller scale. Later, it was about knowing people who lived here, and seeing how they bent their little corners of it to accommodate a life.

And then six years and a few weeks ago, I was here. I still remember the feeling after I moved into my first Manhattan apartment, and my parents and girlfriend at the time had left me, and I was alone with the darkened, high-numbered city street and the clanking old Otis elevator and my keys to an apartment occupied by untold former souls. I felt a pang of fear. What was I getting myself into? You have to really want to live here, or you'll break under the weight, I'd been told. As someone who has at times let the winds of fate blow in to a vacuum of assertive will, I was afraid. But that feeling passed. Very quickly. So much so that I can't affix it to any other moment after that first night alone in the city. Now, it has become home and it is a part of me. When I visit the suburbs, it feels like I pass through an invisible film of time, back into the place of my youth. Except that so many of the things and people who populated that existence aren't the same. After a few days, I'm more than happy to return to my modest studio apartment with the big windows and the brownstones and the park not far and the passersby and the hybrid taxis and the whooshing buses and the moon and the sun.

When you are happy in a place like I am, you want to share that happiness with the people you love. But in coming here and making myself a part of it, I guess I have forgotten what it's like to be on the other side of the moat. NYC is still loud and dirty and expensive and crowded and too paved over and surrounded by water and hard to visit and hard to stay. Any one of those things would be enough to set a normal person on edge, but love is blind. Especially when you embrace a place so much as to begin seeing its traits, good and bad, in you. All of which is to say that I'm trying not to be offended or hurt or disappointed when sensing or knowing flat out that people I love don't really love the place I call home. I'm choosing to believe that there's a core that can be traced within me and understood by others' hearts that was, is and will be separate enough from this big hot mess of a city.

Saturday walk through Brooklyn Heights

2010-05-10T22:20:00.001-04:00

Eric Whitacre at Carnegie Hall

2010-05-03T18:55:00.004-04:00

Last month, I got a chance to see one of M.'s favorite contemporary composers conduct a concert of his work at Carnegie Hall. Eric Whitacre has made a decent career out of creating work that's beautiful and engrossing but also highly accessible to amateur musicians. I'll admit that in the past, I've steered clear of comp tickets offered for scholastic groups performing at Carnegie -- there seem to be a lot of them -- but the promise of seeing Whitacre do his own work and M.'s own recommendation was enough to sway me this time. I wasn't disappointed, and it made me re-evaluate my expectations when it comes to such shows. (I too was a scholastic musician once, so why not assume they're good, even if I'm not a proud family member, as so many in the audience usually are.) The recent concert featured two super-choirs, comprising smaller groups from across the country and even a few from abroad. They were clearly well-rehearsed and many seemed to show an affection for Whitacre's music and maybe even the man himself (think movie star Aaron Eckhart with longer hair).

Like a pop star, the composer offered some patter between each piece, none of which were very long. He says he didn't really "discover" classical music until around age 18, and his works do reflect someone who's in search more for a captivating soundscape than, say, skillfully executed counterpoint. That's not a bad thing. It's fair to assume that coming to the classical realm late in life left him open for experimentation, and fewer qualms against going for cool effects. A hint of one such effect came as each of the young choristers walked onto stage carrying a single sheet of blank copier paper. The props' intention was revealed at the end of "Little Birds," set to a poem by one of Whitacre's favorite poets, Octavio Paz. As the piece ends, the choir snapped the flock of papers above their heads for a quick vigorous flutter. Granted, more avant-garde composers have been using extra-musical effects for decades, but they came across as more plain-hearted and accessible in Whitacre's hands. You can almost imagine him saying to himself, "Would it be really neat if we did this ..."

Because he so often writes with the young musician and the chorus in mind, I don't think Whitacre has quite become a staple of the more traditional classical circuit yet. But maybe that's starting to change. He's set to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in October in a program that also features his wife, soprano Hila Plitmann. He's also apparently going to be composer in residence at a college in Cambridge this fall, a university that has a rich and storied choral tradition. Well before then, he'll be back at Carnegie June 15 for the NY premiere of the concert version of his musical "Paradise Lost," which includes electronic beats, anime projections and Japanese drummers, and has been performed in various incarnations since 2003.

Anyone Can Whistle and Inner Voices

2010-04-10T13:40:00.008-04:00

I find it easy to agree with professional arts reviews and hard to take the opposing view. Perhaps it's my aversion to conflict and confrontation, perhaps a lack of confidence in the wake of people with more years of thinking critically from red velvet seats. But I found myself slightly at odds with a certain highly regarded local publication with respect to two recent shows.

"Anyone Can Whistle," playing through Sunday as part of City Center's Encores series, confirmed, as opposed to questioned, the collective decision of the original audience. (Other shows, particularly some by Sondheim, have shone in revival after flopping in debut.) The book by Arthur Laurents is still a mess, but several of the songs are worthy to be appreciated as individual works apart from the one for which they were created. And the best presenters of those pieces on Thursday night were Sutton Foster and Raul Esparza. I was underwhelmed by the performance of Donna Murphy. She seemed to shine more as a dancer than a singer, which worked well as part of dance sequences that added some much needed kick to the cheesy plot. (I couldn't help thinking of the less successful Off-Broadway musicals I've seen at New World Stages during certain moments.)

I was excited to see the second installment of Inner Voices, running through April 24 at 59E59, after really enjoying the previous three-parter two years ago at the now-closed Zipper Factory. I think the "solo musical" is a fascinating form that deserves to have a broader repertoire. I loved "Mosaic," the first of two pieces. I also knew Heidi Blickenstaff's work in [title of show], so I was happy to see her perform again. It gently morphed from a digitally aided childhood reminiscence to an adult crossroads imbued with contemporary concerns about legacy. The interaction with the her laptop worked really well and didn't feel as forced as it might have. It felt very true to life since so much of our milestones and conflicts are happening with a computer as intermediary or confidant these days. The music was beautiful as well.

The second act, “Whida Peru: Resurrection Tangle,” seems to be more the popular of the two among professional reviewers, but I found it disappointing. After the initial confusion of the quirky scenario settled down, it became rather thin, trying and repetitive. I also don't think the piano player acting as the voice of the spirit world really worked that well, and didn't understand how the main character's sex change was vital to the story. She seemed overstuffed with werid character traits, quirky for quirks' sake. Maybe I'm becoming less appreciative of work that is good fodder for cerebral description but doesn't produce an emotional impact. That's one of the reasons I love going to the theater. Isn't it why a lot of people do?

Laura Linney

2010-03-28T21:36:00.007-04:00

I had a lot of respect for Laura Linney before we went to see her give an on-stage interview tonight at the 92nd St. Y (my first time at the UES institution) and I left with even more. Sometimes you see long-form talks with actors (late-night TV interviews aren't long enough to really get a real sense of someone, I think: a prompted anecdote or two, some banter, cut to commercial, set up the clip, etc.) and they reveal themselves to be less intelligent or less witty or less captivating that you might assume from their performances. Not so with her. Her talk, with Jordan Roth (the 30-something president of Jujamcyn and son of Daryl and Steven Roth of theater and real estate fame), was so filled with insight it felt like it was a performance she might have rehearsed. Granted, not all of these things are totally earth-shattering, and maybe they're more common if you work in acting or have studied it, but I found them interesting to hear. Some takeaways:

*The sometimes thrice-nightly ringing of cellphones in the middle of shows has added a new obstacle for actors on stage, especially during moments of high drama or tension, she said. Do you pause and wait for the awkward moment to pass or barrel on through as if nothing is different? Of course, there have always been potential interruptions in plays and public speaking (and, say, babies crying in the middle of priests' homilies), but there's something new to this nuisance. Callers don't usually know what they are interrupting, whereas less technological interruptions are often prompted by what's going on in situ.

*She said rehearsal has different definitions in the world of live acting and filmed work. Rehearsing for TV or film can feel more like a "negotiation" ("Can we change this line?") than a chance to delve deeper into the characters. As someone who is used to getting the chance to work through a theater character over and over again, whether in the rehearsal room, in previews or even throughout the run of a show, she said she's surprised at how any good work ever makes it to the screen when so much about TV and film is about getting into the virtual can and moving on. Actors, she said, will be heading home after a day of shooting and only then fully understand what they should've done in a particular scene. She also said that actors have a lot more power on stage than they do on screen.

*She has a reputation for not liking to be photographed, a feeling she's obviously had to get under control as she's become more famous. Elaborating on it tonight, she said she didn't like it because there was something standing in the way of a true human connection. The camera turns it into a one-way street, she said, whereas face-to-face interaction and live theater allow for exchange. She said there's a sound to 500 people listening intently and she knows what it feels like NOT to hear that sound when she's on stage. Audiences become like a single organism, she said. Sometimes they break off into multiple parts, but are always ready to coalesce again.

*I learned that she does not like to sing or doesn't do it very well and thus probably won't be appearing in any musicals. (I'd wondered whether she might someday appear in the Tales of the City musical that I saw in workshop form at the O'Neill last summer, although I'm not sure which role she'd play. It would be a stretch at this point to play Mary Ann Singleton, the role she had in the miniseries of the mid-to-late '90s.)

*One of the costs of being an actress, she said, is missing out on a lot of the regular human milestones and holidays that we might take for granted (weddings, funerals, birthdays, Thanksgiving, etc.) when work calls. If acting is really a vocation, then you have to be OK with getting your life sucked up for weeks or months at a time on a project. And with success also comes the ability of others to shape the way you appear in public, to do things over which a more private person might want to have more control. But even with acting success, you're still an employee at the end of the day, she said, and you hope that you get the chance to work for good people and be a part of good projects.

*One of Linney's next big projects is a dark comedy premiering on Showtime this summer called The Big C, for which she is a producer and the lead actress. Oliver Platt and Gabourey Sidibe also will star.

*She's told this elsewhere before, but her first big show was as an understudy at Lincoln Center Theater in Six Degrees of Separation. She was so excited to see her name in a Playbill, she ran down to greet the arriving pallet of programs, ripped one off, rushed to the women's room and flipped through to find her name, which appeared as "Lavro Linney." She said it's now a nickname of hers among certain friends: Lavro or just Lav.

Won't you take me to Kabletown?

2010-03-18T22:05:00.006-04:00

It's fair to say that "30 Rock" is one of the smartest comedies on TV right now, but the writers have been taking it to another level the past few episodes by poking fun at the Comcast-NBC Universal deal. They've always been pretty cheeky about GE and the "Sheinhardt Wig Company" over the years, but the Comcast takeover hasn't even been completed, and they've already written it into the storyline and jokes, usually introduced by Alec Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy, uttering with disdain: "Kabletown ... with a K" and "a company from ... Philadelphia." (Tina Fey, like me, grew up in the suburbs of Philly.) I guess it's not entirely inappropriate for a sitcom about an SNL-type sketch program, which thrives on topical humor. But it still feels a little brave, especially since the show's ratings aren't as good as NBC would probably want them to be. Or course, NBC probably feels that way about a lot of its shows. (Cue the part where the Kabletown exec tells Jack that buying NBC counts as a charitable donation.) Maybe it's gallows humor.

March warmth

2010-03-10T22:45:00.006-05:00

The simple act of running into people you know in parts of the city you wouldn't expect is one of those things that makes me perk up and smile at life. It happened twice this past weekend, when we truly started to shake off the chill of snarky, wintry portmanteaus (snowmageddon, snowpocalypse, snowicane) and revel in the earnest joy of spring. Or if not the season itself, then the promise of it. We passed a fellow chorister from the parish at 96th Street while walking down from Hamilton Heights to see Riverbank State Park. The next day, we saw one of a former co-worker of mine in the Botanical Garden near Fordham. Where warm-weather dreams were concerned, some imagination was required: Along the Hudson, the outdoor pool was still empty, of course, and the nearby water-play area still had slow-melting remnants of the most recent blizzard. But the Bronx conservatory's rain-forest room packed an instant thrill of tropical heat that made me think of Costa Rica as I tied my North Face around my waist and folded my long sleeves up to the elbows. An unlimited-ride MetroCard and a corporate membership offered a few, low-cost moments of kinship with those vacationing Facebook friends and their remotely uploaded photos from the actual Caribbean.

Pics from New York Botanical Garden's 2010 Orchid Show "Cuba in Bloom"

2010-03-08T21:22:00.001-05:00

Zehetmair

2010-03-02T20:40:00.005-05:00

Thomas Zehetmair, the soloist with the London Philharmonic at a concert in Avery Fisher Hall last night, managed to turn in an old standby of the repertoire - Beethoven's Violin Concerto - as something that sounded fresh, by what came in the middle and what followed several rounds of applause. He laced his performance with the (apparently rarely played) Schneiderhan cadenzas: full of chords, thanks to their origin in a piano arrangement of the work, and punctuated by the timpanist, who memorably opens the piece as a whole. Hearing these cadenzas for the first time, I couldn't help but draw the line between such moments in classical music and the world of jazz, which one might argue is really all about the cadenzas (and one of the reasons why I never really progressed beyond a middling jazz-band performer on the saxophone in high school). After Zehetmair took his bows, he announced an encore: a piece by the Swiss oboist and composer Heinz Holliger, written just last fall, in November 2009. (The Times review says it was “Souvenir der Newcastle,” and this blog has more to say on its origin.) It was probably one of the most incongruous encores that I've ever heard, after bathing in Beethoven's classicism. That's not to say I didn't find it interesting, but it felt daring to sandwich a slice of avant garde between two pieces usually guaranteed to bring a crowd (the second half was Brahms' Second Symphony), as if to say, "You loved what you just heard? Well, this is what I play on my days off."

Good night, moon.

2010-02-01T23:26:00.002-05:00

Time Warner Center. Terrace in the Sky. Chuck E. Cheese. Cobblestones off Hancock Park, dedicated to another native Pennsylvanian. St. Nicholas, angling off toward Central Park. Jazz combo in the window of Perks. Rusted-gate, cinder-block facade. Peaceful brownstone front parlors. Empty half-lot. Riverside Church. Sleeping schoolyard.

Recycling day

2010-01-21T23:07:00.002-05:00

Nights when the plastic-bag caterpillars of recyclables sleep outside in the winter air, men in second-hand clothing come to perform a found-art piece about opportunistic survival, punctuated by the rattling of glass bottles. They want what others throw away.

Time Stands Still

2010-01-06T22:51:00.002-05:00

Carpe diem in honor of my grandfather: Bought a ticket to the second preview of Donald Margulies's new play at MTC: Time Stands Still. Stunning performance as usual by Laura Linney, playing a conflict-zone photographer, licking her wounds, adjusting and then readjusting the focus of her life. Alicia Silverstone is buoyant as a neophyte who surprises the older, supposedly wiser characters with simply spoken observations that have more ring of truth to them than they're willing at first to admit. Eric Bogosian is Linney's supportive photo editor, finally opening up to the joy in his midst, and Brian d'Arcy James (finally out of Shrek makeup) is her war-corresponent boyfriend, moving in and out of her more-storied shadow.

Great source for pearl jewelry with high quality and low prices

2009-12-28T19:34:00.006-05:00

Looking for inexpensive but high quality pearls? Check out Black Lotus Designs, a small business run in part by two entrepreneurial, caring, smart and fun women I know from Penn State. I have purchased several items from them for some of the ladies in my life, most recently for Christmas, and they've all been very pleased with the products. The firm offers freshwater Chinese pearls grown from live tissue. They import pieces directly from a family in China that handles their creation from growth to final product. Cutting down on the amount of people who handle the pieces before they arrive on your doorstep keeps prices very reasonable. I'm not an expert on jewelry, but I know I was happy with what they sell.

Quick picks for theater running in NYC

2009-11-21T10:53:00.004-05:00

Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights
Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room
Rogers & Hammerstein's South Pacific
Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts
Melissa James Gibson's This
Jerome Robbins' West Side Story
Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking

Philadelphians at Play

2009-10-13T22:49:00.006-04:00

It's been a back-to-Philly few days for me. As much as I love New York and all that comes with it, there are some things from my childhood outside Philadelphia that remain closer to my heart, among them the old hometown baseball team and orchestra. I jumped back onto the bandwagon this month as the Phillies made it into the postseason, watching with anxiety and ultimately excitement last night as they advanced to the NLCS in a nail-biter of a game from chilly Denver.

Tonight, while the team preps for their next series in Los Angeles, I enjoyed in person another group that does well on the road, the Philadelphia Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall. Just as listening to the Phils' games on my bedside clock radio before drifting off to sleep is a fond memory from growing up, so is experiencing the latter-day incarnation of that famous Philadelphia Sound live at the Academy of Music.

Currently without an official music director, the orchestra is under the familiar baton of Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit, who has a longtime association with the ensemble, often guest conducting at the Mann Center summer concerts in Fairmount Park during the '90s. Tonight's concert, unified by the theme of stirring works from composers in their 20s, opened with one of my favorite pieces in the classical canon: Barber's Adagio for Strings. The piece is so familiar from recordings that I was a little worried it might not pack the same sensory punch of early hearings. I was pleasantly surprised. It snuck up on me. By the time the orchestra approached the pinnacle of the work, a warm shiver was washing over me, close kin to goosebumps. It's just the kind of visceral experience I hope to get at the orchestra, proving that no amount of radio can truly replace being there in the same room with a band as accomplished as the Philadelphians.

The guest soloist of the evening was Yuja Wang, a Chinese pianist still in her early 20s. She played a work that was new to me: Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto. If the Barber is a piece that's easy to adore, the Prokofiev is one that commands respect. I can't say I'm going to rush to download a recording of this piece, but Wang's performance certainly deserved the standing ovation she got. It's truly a vehicle for technical brilliance and artistic stamina: sharp chords and staccato textures alternate with perpetual motion passages that are jaw-dropping in the demands they place upon the performer. She and her slender hands were up to the job. At times, the music sounds like it's about to veer off into some heavy-metal number or free-jazz chart. The occasional rhythmic head bob from the pianist wasn't at all out of place.

The concert closed with the almost-hour-long Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz, appropriately noted as being a staple of music history textbooks in Carnegie's program notes. Appropriate since that's exactly what I associate the piece with: my summer-camp course in music history, learning about Romanticism ("This is the best day of my life, I'm so depressed"), listening to the cassette tape recording as I completed whatever assignment went along with it. Even better was hearing works lying on the ground in the darkened classroom. Nothing untoward ever happened, but it felt just exotic enough for this sheltered kid. My mind usually wanders somewhere in the third movement, after the waltz of the ball and before the programmatic elements start to take on their macabre twists: the march to the scaffold, the execution, the witches' sabbath, the demented quoting of the Dies Irae and the final appearance of the idee fixe. We began the concert with a rapturous meditation on mourning and ended it with a rousing parody of the same. All in a night's journey through the mind of some twenty-something artists.

In the garden at Eolia, Harkness Memorial State Park, Waterford, Conn.

2009-07-28T21:22:00.001-04:00

A winning show

2009-06-16T22:05:00.009-04:00

When we first see the character of Caroline (Christiana Clark) in Carlyle Brown's play "Pure Confidence," at 59E59 Theaters through July 3, she is like an afterthought, an extra in the scene, an antebellum slave girl holding a lace parasol above her white mistress from a doorway, her eyes cast down, speaking only in assent to orders, albeit gently delivered orders. By one of the climactic scenes, she delivers a speech so searing it is like watching someone take control of her life for the first time. Such transformations are the stuff of great theater, especially when they sneak up on you like that.

The play is primarily about Caroline's husband, a black jockey named Simon Cato (Gavin Lawrence) who acquires fame, even as he struggles to buy his freedom in the days leading up to the Civil War. He is a slave, but only in name; his brash take-the-reins attitude is evident from the first scene. As Caroline's mistress ("Mattie," played by Karen Landry) says to her husband, the Colonel (Chris Mulkey), who hires Simon as a freelancer to ride his horse Pure Confidence: "He's already more free than you'll ever be." The second act is years after the war: Simon has chosen to damp some, but not all, of his fire to make do in a new job and a changed landscape. You still see him bristle against the exigencies of the era, but this is the moment for his wife to confront their past and shine. The final scene is a simple pas de deux that barely needs any spoken lines to capture the right emotions.

The play isn't without its flaws -- the heavy use of the n-word may be historically accurate, but it could have delivered the same apt punch without so much of the repetition and the symbolism of slave and master, horse and rider, owned and rented is a little obvious at times -- but it succeeds by focusing on the interrelationships among the older white couple and the younger black pair. Well worth a standing ovation at the end. The production is visiting from Mixed Blood Theatre of Minneapolis.

Water Life Famine Home Sleep Money Air

2009-06-01T21:09:00.003-04:00

From Battery Park City on my three-borough Memorial Day bike ride.

Thom Mayne's hot new addition to the East Village

2009-05-22T22:15:00.003-04:00

"First time"

2009-05-11T22:51:00.013-04:00

Ned Rorem has written something like 500 songs in his lifetime as a composer. I heard 11 of them tonight -- three entirely new -- at Carnegie Hall as part of a world-premiere orchestra song cycle prepared for mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As one of those "unabashedly melodic" contemporary composers, Rorem is someone I probably should have discovered a while ago, but didn't. Sara Fishko's mention and playing the other day on WNYC of a landmark re-released recording of his songs hinted to me that I'd like the music, and tonight's show confirmed it. His quote in the program really summed up well something I noticed: "I like to put down on paper what needs to be put down, and not put down what doesn't need to be put down." It sounds obvious, but isn't always the case.

The compact Orpheus ensemble, famous for performing without a conductor, coheres well with that mentality. Their playing was lush, without overwhelming Graham's vocal lines. She stood at the core of the orchestral semicircle and glanced at the music on her stand only very briefly for each page. My joy as well as frustration with the songs was that they are so economical. Each line of each relatively brief poem is sung just once and then not again (except for the final song, a fantasia on one word only: Alleluia). So just as you are getting to know and love a character, a musical mood, it's over. It reminded me of great movie cues strung together on a soundtrack and separated from the film.

The most touching text for me was "Death and the Young Man," which includes a painfully beautiful repurposing of an old line: "Just be gentle. This is my first time." I especially liked the melding of words and music in "For Susan," "A Journey" and "Clouds." "The Serpent" ('I’m Serious about my Singing Career!') elicited laughter, and "The Lordly Hudson" made me beam with pride to discover a lesser-known pean to New York. Graham's performance was so good you felt the audience straining to withhold their applause after every song. The crowd finally let loose after Emily Dickinson's "Wild Nights," the 10th piece. Perhaps people didn't realize that "Alleluia" was the 11th song, and not just some valediction. Thus, after the clapping died down, the performance of it felt like an encore.

Wit after the fact

2009-04-23T23:22:00.005-04:00

It's great to get into another book by Francine Prose. I really loved 2001's Blue Angel in college, and her latest, Goldengrove, has me looking forward to subway rides and moments before sleep. One of the sweet touches of the narrator is her incarnation of the "staircase spirit," the direct translation of the French phrase, "L'esprit de l'escalier." It's those witty retorts or phrases that you think of only after you've mounted the stairs to leave the scene. But the staircase spirit in this novel is almost like a character in the teenager's brain, taunting her for NOT saying something eloquent as much as anything else. I was a little worried about getting into another story about a family coping with the death of a child, but Prose avoids the maudlin pitfalls of the premise and actually manages to make the story feel breezy and fresh. The staircase spirit is almost like the narrator's lost sister whispering worldliness into her ear.

Rhyme of the moment

2009-04-22T23:25:00.004-04:00

"I'm not a psychopath, I'm no Sylvia Plath."

(Approximate lyric from the musical Next to Normal, currently on Broadway.)

Tail end of The Third Mind

2009-04-17T17:07:00.003-04:00

Halfway through a sixteen-mile bike day - my first of the season and first since the ankle sprain - I stopped off at the Guggenheim Museum to catch The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989. (It closes on Sunday.) Unifying the exhibit is a site-specific work by Ann Hamilton called Human Carriage, which was created for the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. A silver rail runs around the outside of the spiral walkway to carry a little car made up of two temple cymbals draped in transparent fabric. Every so often, a participant in the work sets the carriage in motion from the top of the rotunda. It slides down the rail, nudging past occasional dampers that cause the cymbals to knock into each other and chime. At the bottom of the track, the carriage knocks a glued jumble of sliced-up paperback pages into a pile that has grown as the exhibit has been open.

Another memorable piece was Dream House by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. You enter an anteroom through a series of curtains, where you have to remove your shoes and are warned that the light and sound environment you're about to enter may alter your psychological state (no joke). The carpeted room is mostly dark except for pockets of red and blue light shining against abstract wall hangings. Several banks of speakers emit drones. The volume is just barely on the bearable side of annoying. I lingered for a few minutes and noticed how the drones sounded more static when I was standing still and more wavering when I stepped around the room. I had a flashback to the time I tried sitting and walking meditation at a place on the east side, on the suggestion of my massage therapist, back the last time when I was in physical therapy.

I also was drawn to The Recitation, a 1891 painting by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, on loan from Detroit. Something about the representational depiction of two figures in an otherwise very abstract natural setting captivated me. It got me even more than the Whislters in the room. And at the very beginning of the show, there is a massive five-sided room covered in curling gold leaf, which was just stunning to look at. The title? The Death of James Lee Byars.

Along my walk - from top to bottom: the opposite direction from what they recommend, I know - I spotted the coolest pair of earrings and I had to complement the girl who was wearing them. Turns out she made them herself. They were these Alexander Calder mobile-inspired pieces. She called them a prototype, but gave me her card anyway: Tia Kramer Jewelry. I gather from her web site that she was visiting from Seattle.

Mobile moods

2009-04-08T19:43:00.010-04:00

More than four out of every five people in the U.S. have a cell phone, and some forecasts have the rate headed to 100 percent. (How long before babies start getting their own handsets in the nursery?) It's pretty amazing to think that the majority of that growth happened in two decades. I got my first one around mid-2001, if I recall correctly, not long before 9/11, when about a third of the nation's population already had one. The phone in my dorm room was really the last home landline that I had, not counting work numbers. In general, I'd rank this whole process as progress. But it's ceased being another consumer item and started being something of a necessity. That makes losing the phone or being unhappy with the model you've chosen all that much more of a hassle, and going to the local phone store more and more like a trip to the DMV, what with the sign-in-and-wait rigmarole they have now to handle the heavy volume of customers.

For the first time in probably half a dozen models, I had buyer's remorse when it came to the Samsung Glyde. Too bad I didn't do anything about it until after the initial return period had passed. Verizon Wireless, those tricky folks, have the contract cycle engineered so that you can get a new, discounted (no longer outright free) phone 22 months into your two-year agreement. So after my old model has sustained 22 months of wear-and-tear, I'm ready to head into a store as soon as possible and get something fresh out of the box. At that point, you sign off another two years of your life to the service provider, without ever letting your old contract expire. Now, I went into the store in October, following some online research, thinking that I was going to buy the LG Venus. But when I felt the fake leather back on the in-store model, I demurred and looked at other phones. I finally settled on the Glyde because of the touch screen and the full QWERTY keyboard.

If I'd bothered to research that model as well, I probably would've come across all the complaints about how the touch screen can be maddening and isn't consistently responsive. Sometimes I'll peck at it a dozen times and get no response, leading me to reboot the whole thing. M. claims she's never been able to get it to respond to her touch. Somehow I muddled along for several months, dropping the phone a few times, you know, like you do. The screen seemed to be getting worse.

When I finally lost the thing the other week in a gypsy cab, I wasn't that sad; I was kind of relieved. I'd gotten so frustrated that I considered breaking the contract and going to buy an iPhone. But then there'd be the ugly termination fee to contend with and the cost of the new phone and the new contract, etc. So I ended up just going back to Verizon and filing a claim with the insurance company that I'd decided to actually pay for this time around. $50 deductible and I had a new one within 48 hours.

So I had to shell out money, but I got a fresh piece of equipment. AND! It was loaded with new software that I guess Samsung released sometime last fall in an attempt to quell the complaints from angry users. It's not as good as the iPhone screen, but it's an improvement. Partly because they stole the idea of the iPhone's screen lock, which requires a swiping motion instead of just a key press to unlock. I also decided to buy a molded Body Glove case and a new kind of screen cover. (Another $30)

The extra $80, while annoying, was probably worth it. The phone works better and I feel like it's now better protected to put up with the daily use and abuse that comes its way thanks to my busy life.

It's still grating to have to be under these rolling contracts. I know there are some companies that offer prepaid or pay-as-you-go plans, like I had in England, but they just don't seem as trustworthy or have as extensive networks as the other big national providers. Any suggestions?

Late adapter

2009-03-29T22:25:00.003-04:00

I finally broke down and joined Twitter on the recommendation of DL. Linked it up to FB. Another distraction for posting here.

Open

2009-03-29T20:42:00.001-04:00

A word for any moment.
A song for any word.
A person for any song.
A memory for any person.
A moment for any memory.

Poe: "I'm sorry, I was drunk. I'm broke now. Please publish my story."

2009-03-10T23:44:00.004-04:00

A letter from the author of "The Raven" to a publisher that had been in private hands until recently has been revealed, and includes these rather timeless lines:

Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behavior while in N-York? ... Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.

[From Maud Newton]

Economy-resistant moments

2009-03-08T22:21:00.008-04:00

Now more than ever, it's time to find "value" in life that isn't easy to quantify or reduce to a factor of the massive global (faltering) economy. This is something of a challenge, especially when you work at a place where almost every in-depth story needs to be "trade-able" or its chances of seeing the light of day are slim. So, with a spirit of the grassroots rebel, find moments for which you can't buy a credit-default swap. Now, I'm sure you could play devil's advocate and find something to trade on these ideas. I don't care. To me these feel economy-resistant: Opening a gift bottle of wine that's been sitting on your microwave and realizing that it tastes better than the previous one. Smelling that hard-to-define yet instantly recognizable whiff of natural fragrance that's entwined with memories of warm weather on a warm Saturday. Seeing the skyline from a less-famous angle on the walkway of the GW Bridge. Meeting a friend on a street corner. Getting an autograph at the stage door from three famous stars. Shedding tears at the end of a touching television show. Chatting on the phone about the issues of the day with the people who really matter. Sharing a kiss before parting. Wishing peace to a stranger. Singing in four-part harmony, accompanied by upright bass, guitar and piano. Slipping a few folded windfall bills into a box and lighting a candle. Registering a pain-free breath and a clear-eyed view.

Capital preservation made easy

2009-03-01T21:51:00.003-05:00

You know how they say you want to try to get your income tax payment/refund as close to zero as possible so that you're not giving the government an interest-free loan AND you don't have to come up with a hefty chunk of change in the spring? Well, this year, I wasn't anywhere near zero. I got a refund. And you know what? I'm glad. I'm happy the U.S. got to keep my money for a little while longer than they should have. If I'd taken home more cash in 2008, I might've been tempted to, you know, put it in stocks or something. So instead, the government was nice enough to hold onto that money for me, and return it to me fully preserved. All of which doesn't solve the problem of what to do with it now. Save or invest?

This made me giggle

2009-02-18T21:56:00.003-05:00

Maybe monks have been on to something all these years.

Aside of the day

2009-02-10T23:05:00.002-05:00

(Ask Dodgeball, the now-defunct Twitter-esque, what-bar-is-my-friend-at service that was once a hot item but was ultimately used by about 25 drunken bloggers to meet up on the Lower East Side.)

"How Tweet It Is," New York magazine.

See also Daryl's Web 2.0 Death Pool.

A show of shows

2009-02-09T23:29:00.004-05:00

One of these days, I'll do something with all the ticket stubs I've been saving in little piles around the apartment. (Why I don't just put them all in one pile, I'm not sure yet.) In the meantime, I was indulging in a little thought experiment the other day, while my mind was wandering during a performance of this Saturday night at Carnegie Hall with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus. How many shows -- concerts, plays, dance performances, musicals, revues, etc. -- have I seen in my lifetime? And I mean everything from a Tony-award-winning Broadway production to a free concert in the park. I figured that for the past 10 years, I've seen on average about five things a month -- sometimes more, sometimes less. Add on another 100 performances for the rest of my childhood, and I came up with at least 700. Now, of course, I wouldn't be able to name all of them, although I do have a list of about 100 from this theater club I belong to, but I feel like that number is totally supportable, even as big as it sounds.

Which got me to thinking: If I were ever to become a professional critic of a particular kind of performing art, would I have to largely forgo the variety of other types in favor of my focus area? How many operas, say, does a movie critic end up seeing? Or vice versa? In the meantime, as a happy amateur omnivore, here are three shows I saw recently, enjoyed and would recommend to a friend: Uncle Vanya with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Denis O'Hare, In the Heights with Lin-Manuel Miranda (with whom I share a birthday), and Distracted with Cynthia Nixon. And one opera that blazed only briefly at Carnegie: Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra with Lauren Flanigan.

Sometimes you just need a little Sad Trombone

2009-01-29T23:33:00.003-05:00

Exactly what it sounds like.

RIP John Updike

2009-01-27T23:00:00.005-05:00

Who gave us the following quote and so much more.

"The true New Yorker secretly believes that anyone living anywhere else has got to be, in some sense, kidding."

Of course, he lived in Massachusetts and wrote mostly about lives in the Rest of America, so this was probably written with more than a little mocking.

Idea for theater producers out there

2009-01-26T22:44:00.005-05:00

Produce Duncan Sheik's new musical, "Whisper House." Album comes out tomorrow. From what I've heard so far, it's great!

(And no, despite getting a letter of interest in the mail today asking whether I want to be a producer, I'm not seeing it on the horizon just yet.)

Blue room at 57th and Park

2009-01-25T21:53:00.003-05:00

More recent photos here.

Last Saturday, four days late

2009-01-14T22:48:00.003-05:00

Brunch at Nice Matin, L's old place of employment. Very attentive service. No water glass or coffee cup was allowed to reach bottom. Buttery-fresh brunch basket: pain au chocolat, etc. Medieval-looking lion-handled bowl of hot chocolate for M. Might've held mead instead. Still, approaching bar volume.

Lounging in the womb/iris of Pipilotti Rist's enveloping multimedia and multisensory installation at MoMA. Quite a treat. Cozy couch, rug full of amenable strangers. Children bounding about. Y-shaped pillows to share. Entrancing, sensual images of the beauty in natural decay/entropy displayed around the usually quite sterile atrium, former home of Broken Obelisk. Swapping out XY for XX. The video loop turned back upon itself and we craved more. Go before Feb. 2!

Recession chic. Order the expensive and delicious fish dishes at Extra Virgin without appetizers or booze. Wash it down with a round at 55 Bar, where now-Grammy-nominated Kate McGarry was jamming with her trio.

Off to desolate, snowy Bushwick. Morgan Avenue. Reminded me of the scene from Buster Keaton's "The Frozen North." Looking for the show? Not the random art show on the first floor. The random free variety show in the fourth-floor loft. Good, better, worse. Jason Trachtenberg on an especially off night. Happy for an intermission, an out. Subway back to the frozen north of Manhattan.

Ren Faire remix

2008-12-17T23:40:00.003-05:00

From the creators of TheBurg comes a trenchant look at those anachronistic folk who yearn in the suburban woods for a past they never knew: All's Faire.

Deconstructing the shove

2008-12-17T22:41:00.005-05:00

A paparazzo shoved Bernie Madoff, the $50 billion Ponzi scheme braggart and possible felon, and it was caught on video. But I'm left wondering: Was this a vengeful shove or a tactical one or maybe a little bit of both? I don't watch enough celebrity gossip shows to know, but is shoving your subject a guerilla way to produce a frowny or angry face on a disgraced subject while also buying you an extra second or two to snap another photo? The fact that the shove was immediately followed by the photog snapping another shot made me consider this. Either way, it reminds me that as much as I love photography, I wouldn't be able to hack it as a pro photojournalist.

Tonight

2008-12-16T22:23:00.003-05:00

A good day's work at an end. Running into an old friend. Handshake. His first time visiting. Impressed with the place you go every day. Seeing it through fresh eyes again. Not enough time to really catch up. Phone rings twice. Another friend. Dinner awaits. Snow falling outside in the Christmas tree courtyard. A promise to see each other after Christmas. In another place. One of many holiday places on the plan. Dinner at Cafeteria. Evergreens turning white slowly outside. Seafood inside. Catching up after almost a semester apart. Hot cocoa and tea and cookies and high ceilings in a new apartment not too far away. Dessert over. Bed calls. But not before a call before bed. Taxi part of the way. An extra dollar in the stack of ones, passed from bartender to me to driver. Keep it anyway. White-lit trees outside the skyscraper. Escalators down. The simple joy of falling blocks and colorful lines. Charlie Brown on the rotation. Mesmerized by the screens. Out the tunnel. Dar Williams. Mortal City. Swinging door, held for another. Icy-tipped hillside. Tears brim. A moment in the snow. Song ends. A couple huddles beneath the scaffolding. Door. Key. Home.

Rudy the Red-Beaked Honda

2008-12-15T21:03:00.004-05:00

I saw not one but two vehicles this weekend sporting this "car costume."

The New Yorker's traditional year-end salutations in light verse...

2008-12-15T15:18:00.003-05:00

Revived!

(It's been gone so long, it was new to me.)

"Greetings, Friends!" (2008)

The beginning of a poem I didn't finish

2008-12-04T00:41:00.002-05:00

I have become accustomed to decay.
Signature slumps, posters tear,
Sole wears thin, sings out for repair.
Graffiti appears where volunteers once sweat,
Mocking Matissean leaves and flourishes.
Age shoulders in on once golden feats,
Scrubbing mystery, sowing fear.

RIP Sharp QT-CD44 (1990-2008)

2008-11-18T19:51:00.006-05:00

Like a beloved pet that lived far longer than its usual life expectancy, my old trusty Sharp CD boom box ("QT-CD44 stereo radio cassette recorder with compact disc player") kept hanging on through the 2000s, even as the term "mix tape" become horribly outdated. It was my first ever CD player, circa 1990, and so I had a fondness for it. But lately, it just hasn't been the same anymore. In its final years, I had to start any disc spinning by hand (no joke!), then slam the lid shut and press play in order to have any hope of hearing the music. Then that part broke and I used it mainly for listening to the radio in the kitchen. Now, it's not even doing that. Time to say goodbye to what's probably been my longest continually running piece of electronics. You've served me well.

`You know ... for kids!'

2008-11-14T14:01:00.002-05:00

The winning "Hoop" design for the city's new bike racks made me think of that famous line from the Coen brothers' movie The Hudsucker Proxy. I haven't used any of the prototypes yet, but they look like they'll provide a reasonably good way to string a chain through the frame and front wheel and rack without having to stretch that far, while the design also evokes their purpose: They look like bicylce wheels, after all.

Content placement?

2008-11-12T20:40:00.006-05:00

One of my favorite guest-character arcs in "How I Met Your Mother" involved "Victoria," one of Ted's girlfriends in Season 1. She was played by Ashley Williams, who sort of disappeared -- from my radar screen at least -- after her story in the show was over. Now she's resurfaced in something called "Novel Adventures" on CBS.com. Not CBS, CBS.com -- it's a "web original." From the very start, something was fishy: They kept mentioning Saturn in the same breath as the show. Then I watched it. Let's just say I was less than three minutes in and they'd already plugged Saturn like half a dozen times in the script or the set. Ashley's character's husband actually works at a Saturn dealer. Now I enjoy a well-written, witty commercial, like the best of 'em. But what are we to make of a show written entirely around a brand? Move over, product placement, this is a lame attempt at content placement. As much as I like that actress, I can't bear to watch an eight-part ad for something I'll probably never buy. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. Back in the day, when broadcast shows were sponsored by one brand, at least they had enough self-respect to actually produce content worth watching, right? Or is this not actually that much beyond the pale in television history terms?

This is what deep discounting looks like

2008-11-11T17:34:00.002-05:00

So you know how you read recently that retailers are slashing prices to move their inventory, a good news/bad news sign of the economy? Proof in the pudding: I just bought jeans at Banana Republic that originally cost $78 for less than $8, thanks to a slew of discounts that included my having a credit card from the store. That's about 90 percent off when all is said and done.

Dog and pony show

2008-11-11T10:19:00.009-05:00

If Road Show, the renovated Sondheim musical formerly known as Bounce and playing at the Public through the end of the year, had been written by any other composer, I would've walked out thinking that wasn't half bad. But with Stevie, the bar is set rather high. The book -- inspired by the Mizner brothers, known for picaresque misadventures and society beach cottages in Florida -- is John Weidman of Pacific Overtures and Assassins fame. Those two shows left me feeling about the same way that I did after this latest one. They were entertaining enough in the moment, but don't really leave me with all that much to go home with. Direction is by John Doyle, whose work on Sweeney Todd and Company was excellent. This time around, the actors aren't playing any instruments and the live musicians are off stage the whole time. One of the central motifs of the musical is the idea of throwing a lot of money around, made literal in the several dozen times that characters actually toss piles of cash into the air to have the bills flutter around like autumn leaves. I'd argue that this bit of direction might've been overused just a little bit, but it certainly unites the different aspects of the brothers' lives. The costumes worn by the ensemble work better: They are made of fabric printed with architectural drawings of the kind that Addison Mizner draws for his rich clientele in New York and Florida. (At first, I thought they were bank checks, which also would've worked.) The set is basically a mountain/wall of brick-a-brack, filled with props that come in handy for various milestones along the Mizners' road(s). Alexander Gemignani and Michael Cerveris do a decent job of highlighting the shades of gray in the Mizners' journeys. They're not quite crooks and they're not quite successful businessmen either. The Playbill notes nod at real estate bubbles past and present. The show's about 100 minutes without intermission. I paid full price, which I regret somewhat. If you can get in to see it for anything less, it might be worth it.

Peak color

2008-11-10T10:12:00.001-05:00

When big news hits ...

2008-11-09T10:55:00.003-05:00

People still flock to the front page of newspapers, even if it's just online: Obama Wins over and over again on the Newseum's Web site.

Papa was a rodeo

2008-11-07T22:53:00.002-05:00

I used to be a blogger. That was part of my self-imposed job description. I loved it. It was part of who I was. Is it still? These past few months have been really pretty harrowing on a lot of levels. I'm thankful that I still have a job, as do the people around me. Work seems to have sucked up all my words. I'm left with little to none at the end of the day. All I can muster is that one line on Facebook: the status report. A one-sentence blog? Sometimes there's satisfaction to be had in that small space. Not always, though. I tallied up the story count from the past 12 months: 1,000 takes. A little more than that actually. And the more I write, the less they pay me for every story, it occurred to me. My doctor says I'm stressed. I can't really disagree, but is it only stress? Is there something else that's wrong with me? Is he a therapist or a general practitioner? I should make another appointment. Will he spend most of the time talking about how stressed I look again? I got a five-minute chair massage today. It was a little bit rough toward the end, but that's probably because I'm so tense. No harm done, in the end. I need to go again, to the train station. I wish it weren't so late.

W.W. George Bailey D. ?

2008-11-03T21:39:00.001-05:00

On the most famous liquidity crisis in American film: "You’re thinking of this place all wrong," George tells the crowd. "As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here."

'Mass' on Saturday in a Protestant church

2008-10-26T20:25:00.006-04:00

The confluence of motifs was certainly unique. There we were on a blustery Saturday afternoon, sitting inside the United Palace, that vast, old wonder theater at 175th Street that does double duty now as church and all-purpose performance venue. Munching on fundraiser popcorn, wearing our respective college football T-shirts for the game that evening and watching the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and hundreds of singers and dancers perform Bernstein's Mass, a post-'60s theater piece inspired by the Catholic liturgy, though not strictly adherent to it. It's a long piece: about 100 minutes without breaks, but it had some pretty captivating moments, like the opening number, "A Simple Song" and the Agnus Dei ("Dona nobis pacem") that devolves into a fist-pumping anti-war march. The Celebrant, played by Jubilant Sykes, captured well the broad range of singing styles and emotions needed for the role, and the city schoolchildren, who took up the center front section of the orchestra seats, were rousing in their selected moments of congregational singing. It was also great to hear the Bersteinian echoes of West Side Story and Candide. The concert wasn't without its distractions, although the restless audience members around us eventually settled down. While we did have to pay $15 to get in, the crowd had more of a free-outdoor-classical-concert vibe than you would expect from an indoor show. The same was true for the Rite of Spring project last year with the Berlin Philharmonic at the United Palace (another Carnegie Hall production). That said, it's great to have so many people get together in an uptown location to see a world-class orchestra join with local students to create impressive spectacles. I look forward to the next idea they come up with.

It's not even Halloween yet!

2008-10-19T20:46:00.006-04:00

It might've been a fluke or a mistake in the playlist, or perhaps it's just that the economy needs all the help it can get this year, but I officially heard the first Christmas song of that ever-lengthening season. (For the record, it was some cover of "All I Want For Christmas Is You.") It was in a Thai restaurant on Ninth Avenue, and I have a witness. Only 67 shopping days left!

'Songs of Fear and Longing: Nellie McKay (attempts to cover) the Classics!'

2008-10-13T19:10:00.009-04:00

Nellie McKay gave a disturbingly distracted performance last night at Spiegelworld on the East River's Pier 17. (The venue itself, while novel and captivating the past few summers, seems to have overstayed its welcome this fall, judging by a) the sparse crowds on an evening before a holiday for many people and b) the amount of discounted tickets being flogged for the three marquee shows: Absinthe, Desir and the Gazillionaire.) We audience members were kept waiting in a line outside of the second tent ("Salon Perdu") for half an hour beyond the advertised start time of 10 p.m. When we finally entered the tent, it was clear that McKay didn't exactly sell out the venue. They'd arranged just enough folding wooden chairs in the center to accommodate those expected; the eight-seater booths around the periphery were closed off. If she'd brought her A-game, we might've remembered it as a lovely intimate show.

Now, I enjoy Nellie's own music, her sprightly piano rap and sarcastic sentimental weepies, if you will, but I'd thought of her as a talented musician in general, no matter whose song it is she's singing, having seen her in concert before. Last night, she looked like a frazzled young piano teacher or harried accompanist who's kept the students or auditioners waiting, complete with a canvas bag of tattered fake books. Right from the beginning it was clear something, or a whole Pandora's box of somethings, was bothering her. Where exactly her mind was, we never found out. All we know is we were treated to an evening punctuated by false starts, abrupt cuts, long awkward stretches of her flipping through the worn-out songbooks in search of this tune and that tune and always her apologizing half-heartedly for her less than stellar stage presence and performance.

M. told me afterward, "I wanted to scream out, 'Spit it out: What's wrong?'" She even went so far as to hint that refunds might be in order for people who requested them. When she was playing and knew the song, mostly old standards and American songbook classics with some of her own thrown in toward the end, Nellie played well. And the uptown Manhattan native did a pretty funny vamp on New York politics in the middle of "Take the A Train" that began something like "My mother used to work for David Paterson..."

We all have bad days at work, but not all of us work in the spotlight, which of course can contribute itself to performers having bad days now and then. But I have to say this is the first show that I can remember where it seemed as though the musician was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown before our eyes. I felt like we were caught in a farce. It produced in me this strange mixture of awkward pity and strange curiosity. We kept waiting for her to blurt out what it was that was slowly driving her mad; it never came. The end of performance did come - before midnight, I think. We clapped, she left the stage, and then we stopped clapping. There would be no encore this evening. Does anybody know what's wrong with Nellie?

AQ Kafe

2008-10-09T20:06:00.009-04:00

I discovered a new place to feed that occasional craving for Swedish meatballs I have, and it's not in Red Hook. It's actually right on my way home from the office in a neighborhood that's lacking in low-key, easy, reasonably priced places to get a bite: greater Columbus Circle. It's called AQ Kafe, and it's focused on light Northern European bakery cafe fare (read: mostly Scandinavian). The spare -- though not uninviting -- interior is sort of Le Pain Quotidien meets Ikea showroom floor. The fresh lemonade had the right tang and actually paired well (no wine here) with the lemon vinaigrette in the green salad. There is a side salad and an entree-size one for almost $4 more, but I honestly thought there'd been a mistake when I saw how big the "side salad" actually was. The meatballs are served in two small whole-grain rolls with lingonberry, pickled cucumber slices and just the right amount of cream sauce. As much as I love the ones served up in the shadow of that great blue-and-yellow particle-board paradise, these are pretty sensational. The plate is rounded out with dill potato salad, pickled beets (they're yellow!) and a tiny pickle, just in case you missed the theme. The portion seemed a bit modest upon arrival, but it certainly filled me up while at the same time offering a slightly more piquant kick of flavor than the old standby Ikea cafeteria platter.

Subtle Aussie pun

2008-10-09T12:14:00.001-04:00

I'm going to try to catch the first episode of the American version of
"Kath and Kim" tonight on NBC. Even with all the advertising around
town for this show, it wasn't until this morning that I realized it's
a pun on the saying "kith and kin."

What I've been up to

2008-09-23T22:20:00.006-04:00

[Perfunctory disclaimer: I've been remiss in blogging.] The daily tremors shaking the financial system have been taking up a good deal of my energy during the daylight hours, but I guess I should be thankful I still have a job to go to everyday. What's been left has been devoted mostly to a) watching perpetual reruns of "Family Guy," b) enjoying the waning days of summer, c) planning for two back-to-back out-of-town weddings in coming weekends, d) spending my first full weekend on the Sound in Connecticut, e) looking forward to payday at the end of the month, f) talking on the phone, g) reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, h) re-organizing my dresser drawers, and i) seeing Mrs. Warren's Profession and Legally Blonde on stage for free in the same day. [I guess when you start to make a list, it hasn't quite been a total workaholic span. It only feels that way.]

Hard to believe ...

2008-09-10T22:03:00.005-04:00

[Photo by ro.man.tic]
... That it's been seven years already. This will be the fifth time I've been here for the anniversary. Hoping to get a good look at the Tribute in Light finally. As each year passes, it dominates my consciousness a little less. I think back to that day when I spent the hours of 10 a.m. till 2 a.m., covering the local reaction. I've now worked 12-hour days more than I'd wish to report on important, though admittedly less-consequential, events.

RIP Don LaFontaine (1940-2008)

2008-09-02T22:36:00.006-04:00

In a world where we'll no longer get to hear new takes from one of these famous announcer guys ...

Next on the NYC public art hit parade

2008-09-01T22:38:00.007-04:00

So the unofficial end of summer was greeted by a downer of a public art news item: Eliasson's Waterfalls are having their hours cut back because of some unintended environmental consequences. What do we have to look forward to in the fall? How about Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's upcoming piece in Madison Square Park, running from Oct. 24 to Nov. 21? It's called Pulse Park, and will be a little bit more interactive than the Waterfalls are. Think heartbeats of passers-by and spotlights piercing the night, and watch this video from a similar installation in Toronto last year. And in other Madison Square Park related news, Shake Shack is coming to the Upper West Side in October (77th and Columbus, catercorner from Isabella's)!

ConEd surprise

2008-08-29T00:25:00.002-04:00

So you know all that rage about high gas prices? Never really hit me. No car. No gas to buy. Not until now. My electricity bill for the past month? For my studio? $136.64. Um, yeah. Maybe summer coming to a close ISN'T such a bad thing after all.

NYC Waterfalls redux

2008-08-17T11:45:00.006-04:00

I was somewhat ambivalent when I saw Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls for the first time, but I have to say I have a stronger affection for them at night. Granted, there's a limited amount of time to experience them illuminated from behind by the LED lights, but that span will grow longer as the days get shorter, moving toward the outdoor exhibition's closing in mid-October. Twilight ends around 8:20 lately, and the waterfalls stay on until 10. We got to enjoy them after seeing the latest theater-in-a-round-tent acrobatic cabaret, Desir, at Spiegelworld, the seasonal entertainment venue that's been making the South Street Seaport safe for locals in recent summers. The waterfalls' ghostly white flicker makes for a wonderful addition to the nighttime East River waterfront.

Tunnel mural update

2008-08-14T21:06:00.005-04:00

A friendly anonymous commenter, who sounds like s/he is involved somehow, offered this explanation for the new mural at the entrance to the 191st Street 1 train station:

"The mural is being sponsored by the NYC Department of Transportation and the Mayor's Office and fabricated by Groundswell Community Mural Project with Lead Artist Belle Benfield, Assistant Artist Chris Brown, and 15 teens, many of whom live and attend school in the Washington Heights area. The Y of Washington Heights/Inwood has also played a significant role in supporting the project by providing space to the team to brainstorm and design the mural. Look forward to the entire tunnel being painted this upcoming Wednesday, August 20th by City Year and 150 volunteers."

The mural project website lists Friday, August 22 - time TBA - as the dedication day for the artwork. I really hope that the artistic designs shame the taggers from leaving their mark on, at least, the mural portion of the new paint job.

Reality wrapped in a nest of joy and historic scope

2008-08-09T14:49:00.011-04:00

The opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, the latest stunning installment of which we witnessed last night, have the power and global reach to tell us a lot about what's good and what's less than good about the world at a given moment. Chief among the good on display 8/8/08 would have to be the awe-inspiring spectacle carried out, under the grand cinematic eye of Zhang Yimou, by the cheerful, intense and well-rehearsed thousands of Chinese who got to be a part of the show at the Bird's Nest. It really was stirring in a way that surpasses most of what memories I have of other artistic displays preceding other games. Yes, it could be seen as a brilliant piece of propaganda for the Communist Party, but I'm willing to accept that taint for the beauty it held.

The second act, of course, is the parade of nations, when a taste of reality sets in: We are reminded of all the war-torn and poverty stricken countries that still cover the earth and we are reminded of how, while we do a lot as a country to ease those pains, we do much also to cause them, whether directly or indirectly. We are reminded of how so many countries continue to treat women as lesser humans, whether through national policy or less-official though no less scary means. We're reminded of how fluid the flags under which the athletes compete can be -- whether for noble reasons or more pecuniary ones. Thus is the ebb and flow of globalization. And of course, the ideal of the Olympic truce was thrown out the window this year, as Russia and Georgia raised arms against one another yesterday.

Lucky, for hopeful people, there is a third act to these ceremonies: the finale of the worldwide torch relay. Eight last runners carried the Olympic flame around the National Stadium -- truly a work of art in itself and already one of my favorite new buildings of this century. Li Ning, a 1984 medalist in gymnastics, received it last. He was lifted into the sky and "ran" around the circumference of the stadium's rooftop scrim before lighting the cauldron, a structure twisted like the end of a scroll. It continued a moving theme of the evening from a country that invented paper and printing. If you didn't get a chance to see the ceremonies, look for an opportunity to do so. I will remember it for a long time.

Tunnel Street makeover

2008-08-07T21:58:00.005-04:00

The three-block-long "spooky" tunnel (something of an obsession of mine) that connects Broadway with the 191st Street (1) train subway station has been closed intermittently in recent days, I'd imagine, to allow for some talented artists to create a mural surrounding the entrance. As much as I've gotten use to the perpetual cycle of graffiti and whitewashing that goes on inside the tunnel, it's a welcoming site to see such bright colors at the mouth. I wonder who's been doing the painting.

Nah gonna see it

2008-08-04T22:55:00.003-04:00

So is NOT seeing The Dark Knight a countercultural choice yet?

Movie list in July!

2008-07-31T23:46:00.004-04:00

Lots of people highlight great movies worth seeing at the end of the year (i.e. December). Why not do the same in July, half a year later? Here are some quick picks, worth checking out if you haven't already -- including one that's have made it to the rental stage of its life cycle: Wall-E, Man on Wire, Definitely, Maybe, Lars and the Real Girl and ... Get Smart (go in with low expectations and a very loose sense of comparison to the original and you might be mildly impressed).

Movies I still want to see: Edge of Heaven, Roman de Gare, American Teen and Brideshead Revisited.

Movie I will never see under any circumstances: The Love Guru. (OK, maybe. Someday. When I'm really bored and feeling in the mood to experience what it means to be anti-funny. Perhaps.)

Chain link

2008-07-31T22:01:00.003-04:00

Test your chain knowledge of New York City. McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Dunkin Donuts: Place these in order from most locations to least locations within the five boroughs. The answer, written up here in Crain's, might surprise you.

Micro prefab at MoMA

2008-07-29T23:07:00.003-04:00

The next time your apartment feels small, just think of this 76-square-foot machine for living currently on display in MoMA's "back lot" -- future site (::fingers crossed::) of the amazing twisty proposed Jean Nouvel tower.

Night pier

2008-07-23T20:54:00.001-04:00

Nerd graffiti in a bathroom stall of B&N USQ

2008-07-23T20:42:00.001-04:00

Street songs on the pier

2008-07-22T22:24:00.005-04:00

The Public Art Fund showed Dara Friedman's 48-minute film Musical tonight on a pier off Riverside Park South, as dark clouds loomed but didn't break and night fell. I missed seeing it when it was at Gavin Brown's Enterprise last month, but I think seeing the film out in the open, among people, was a much more fitting way to experience it. After all, the film - shot over a few weeks last fall - consists of dozens of people singing a capella in public places, roaming the streets of Midtown Manhattan or standing in some of its most famous indoor spaces: the MoMA lobby, Grand Central Terminal. It doesn't really have a story line beyond the ones captured in the lyrics of each song, but the film brought to mind: movie musicals shot on the streets of New York, iPod lip synching, street buskers, the Joshua Bell experiment in Washington, reality television, and the way we do or do not reveal our reactions to things that don't fit our expectations. Almost all of the performers sing pretty well and mostly in key, and when they don't, it's usually for effect or just plain funny. It's one of those pieces of art that makes you look a little more closely at the people around you. What songs or stories are they carrying around in their head?

City cuisine: Goodbye, hello

2008-07-21T21:26:00.005-04:00

Latest palpable sign of tough economic times ahead: The considerable amount of vacant storefronts around town. I've always been aware of the turnover in retail, restaurants, and bars, but it doesn't seem like there's been this many closings since I moved here in spring 2004.

Frown-inducing closings in recent memory: Mary's Dairy on West Fourth and the Baggot Inn on West Third. Zen Palate on Union Square. Cafe Figaro on Bleecker. Ivy's Books (Broadway) and Monsoon (Amsterdam) on the Upper West Side. Les Deux Gamins in the West Village.

What's the future? Total daily nutrition -- a la the Axiom from Wall-E -- delivered through cups and cones hawked by any one of the proliferating high-end frozen dessert purveyors.

This actually was his (show)

2008-07-18T22:26:00.008-04:00

I was a bit disappointed to find Kelli O'Hara's name on the not-appearing-tonight flier stuffed in our Playbills the other night at LCT's South Pacific, my recent ambivalence her new album notwithstanding. Her understudy was decent enough, but just not the same. Luckily, we got to enjoy the memorable Brazilian opera singer and now Tony-award-winning Broadway star Paulo Szot, in the lead male role of Emile de Beque. That man knows how to command a stage without really seeming to try too hard. Such a wonderful voice too. M. and I noted how his voice stood out as having much more power behind it than most of the other performers. The show, one of those classics by Rodgers & Hammerstein that are filled with famous melodies from curtain to curtain, definitely felt true to its origins. The production doesn't fuss with allusions to present day sentiments. It felt like a revival in the truest sense, free of attempts at "updating" it. That's not to say I don't respect the importance and potential of doing that for classic plays and musicals. If anything, the show erred on the side of being respectful at the expense of pizzaz. Not a problem, as there was more than enough soul in Szot's singing to go around.

Open bar x 2

2008-07-15T22:50:00.004-04:00

Last night, it was the wrap party for the Forum for Urban Design's bike-sharing demonstration project. Tonight, it was MoMA's opening reception for Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. Last night, there were cookies and hors d'oeuvres like mini BLTs on brioche rolls and some sort of tortilla filled with cheese and pumpkin that actually tided me over. Tonight, the light snacks that were promised in the invitation turned out to be heavy on the lightness: mostly breadsticks and nuts. Thus, I'm chowing down on some late-night mac 'n cheese as I read about how NYC is a drinker's paradise in the summer. Says the Times: "a certain extra layer of permissiveness seems to infuse the city in the summertime, along with a wellspring of opportunities to get sloshed, slightly or mightily."

"I told you I had to quit the body shop so I could work on my swordsmanship."

2008-07-14T21:27:00.006-04:00

Fans of TheBurg -- which still needs your hits and help! -- should recognize several of the same actors from hipsterville featured in a trailer for a satirical video project about another quirky, colorful, close-knit community: Ren Faire. It's called All's Faire.

E lucevan le stelle

2008-07-13T16:31:00.007-04:00

M. sang in the chorus for a production of Puccini's Tosca at the Riverside Church this weekend that showed how a shoestring budget operation can still produce great opera. The Times article I read the other day recounting the 25-year history of supertitles provided a good backdrop for seeing an opera for the first time without the simultaneous English translation above or below the action. I'd seen Tosca before and it didn't take long to brush up on the plot. That left me the ability to focus more fully on the singing and the acting and to look for the subtler emotional touches warranted by the story. It also made it feel a little more passionate and mysterious. The use of the space also impressed me. The audience was arrayed in diagonal lines, cutting across a rather ornate meeting room on the 10th floor of the tower of Riverside Church, the tallest church in the U.S., funded back in the '20s by Rockefeller money. It well suited the three settings of Tosca: a church, palace apartments, and the parapet of a castle. Rather than using the actual stage provided, the action took place off to the side of the room, which could easily stand in for each act's scenery - right up to the part where Tosca jumped out the window (onto a safe ledge overlooking the Hudson and the starry sky). The show produced the desired Puccini goosebumps for me.

Congressional influence

2008-07-11T00:05:00.002-04:00

It's heartwarming to learn that while it is becoming harder and harder to find a rent-stabilized apartment in this town, Charlie Rangel has managed to occupy -- and finely appoint -- four of them. Nice, also, to know that I've been paying more than he does on a per-unit basis.

Interesting use of those horizontal ceramic rods

2008-07-09T20:32:00.007-04:00

That part of me that hated the architecture of the new New York Times Building since I first saw it piercing the skyline kinda enjoys the fact that it’s become this target for climbers (three so far!). Yes, it’s illegal and dangerous and not really as majestic, say, as what Philippe Petit did at the World Trade Center. But it adds a quirky bit of history to a facade than reminds me of an especially hideous 1970s jail.

That time of life, I guess

2008-07-09T20:10:00.007-04:00

This seems to be the year of people around me getting engaged. That's generally a good thing; I wish them the best. With that in mind, though, here's a good read of a column by Maureen Dowd, who spoke to a longtime marriage counselor about what to look for in a potential husband. (And no, the richest contract in baseball isn't one of them.)

The camera is in the shop

2008-07-08T21:14:00.002-04:00

In recent weeks, the pictures I've been snapping with my Canon PowerShot SD800 IS have been showing up unacceptably blurry through half the frame, even after I cleaned the lens, so I figured now was time to see if that $90 warranty I was suckered into purchasing last year from Best Buy would prove to be worth it. At the time they promised repair or replacement. My fingers are crossed while it's being sent away. Thus, no new original photos in this space until at least July 12.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

2008-06-30T23:55:00.007-04:00

Remember that amazing emotion-inducing Pulitzer-Prize-winning WaPo article about Joshua Bell playing incognito in the Metro? Read this. The story, as in how this article came to be and what preceded it, just became even more astounding. (The same violin! It's almost like a less melodramatic version of The Red Violin, the soundtrack of which Bell performed on.)

UPDATE: Gene Weingarten also wrote a satirical column on the supposed decline of copy editors that doubles as an exercise in copy editing.

TheBurg shout-out

2008-06-30T23:43:00.004-04:00

You haven't checked out TheBurg.tv in a while, have you? You're missing out! And you're not helping them create Season 2, either. Hit 'em up. Prove people do watch internet sitcoms. (Especially ones with lots of great PSU connections.) One of the guys was in a band called Holy Mary Mother of Bert back in the day! If that isn't a good reason, I don't know what is.

O Wall-E, Wall-E, or The Water is Wide

2008-06-30T19:17:00.007-04:00

"Looks like it's going to start up again out there," said the Union Square Whole Foods cashier as she loaded my contributions to Sunday afternoon's patio barbecue with J. and co. into a double-bagged paper sack. (They've gotten rid of disposable plastic bags, of course, and I had wondered for a moment whether I was going to have to pay for a carryall like at Ikea these days.) It was still dry as I took the steps down to the L for Brooklyn, but the Floridian-like weather pattern was making its presence felt again by the time I got out at Graham Ave. and waited under one of the sleek new bus shelters that only do so much when the rain is really coming down. The bus didn't show up soon enough to prevent me from scrapping the wait and giving in to a soaking. The BQE overpass eventually provided some slightly derelict respite and a moment to contemplate the weekend's culture.

The Times reporters might've added another item to their list of lesser-known New York City waterfalls, had they seen the drain pipes gushing or the highway ledges leaking yesterday. Unseen cars rushing by above added to the aquatic display as they splashed through puddles, spraying water over the edge. Somehow, the sum effect was more bracing than what I'd experienced on my (abbreviated) bike tour of Olafur Eliasson's $15 million contribution to the East River waterfront. A good solid thunderstom can do that to me, and there was something about being both caught outside and yet somewhat protected from the elements that delivered the kind of mind-to-body reaction that I thought of the other day during the artist's talk. The Waterfalls will be around for a few months, so I'll have more time to live around them and perhaps come up with different experiences, but I guess at the very least they made me see the art in the drainage of the highway. (And I guess the BQE is becoming something of a muse these days, what with Sufjan Stevens' recent work by that title at BAM and all.)

The other thing I couldn't help thinking about was my soggy earth-friendly paper bags, which seemed to be biodegrading before my eyes. They weren't going to make it to the get-together, let alone be around 700 years from now for a little robot like Wall-E to clean up. The movie, however, is bound to become a classic and here's hoping sticks in our collective memory for years to come. The first half is one of the most artistic things ever created in the animated form. You really do forget you're watching a cartoon. The opening sequence with the combination of a slightly hokey but still endearing and upbeat show tune and a deeply realized post-apocalytpic urban landscape is up there with the beginning to Woody Allen's Manhattan in my thinking. Much has been made about the lack of traditional dialogue through the first half. I didn't find that made things drag at all. If anything, things happen more quickly than I expected. We're introduced to the shape and feel of a future Earth with little extra time to zone out. The satire of the second half is just playful enough without losing all of its bite -- or its self-awareness. And the end titles are a masterpiece in and of themselves: a name-that-style, whirlwind tour through the history of art, complete with 1980s-style video-game graphics of the film's characters to finish things off. I look forward to seeing it again.

Lunch with Olafur

2008-06-26T20:36:00.008-04:00

The New York City Waterfalls, after several weeks of much-blogged-about testing, were officially turned on today, complete with the obligatory presser. I'm going to withhold judgment until I see them in person, but I have to say it was cool to hear an almost hourlong talk by Olafur Eliasson, the artist behind the latest privately funded public-art spectacle. His talk kind of meandered from a recent lunch he had with Al Gore and how we like to think about making a difference in the world through to his past work (a brief flood in Johannesburg, dyeing rivers in European capitals, creating a second sun for the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall) and into his current piece. It was enjoyable to try to follow, even if I didn't grasp it all. His art, if I got what he was trying to convey correctly, aims to question the indifference that normative spaces can induce. He wants to stop us from becoming numb to our surroundings and become aware of how concepts move from mental space into physical space. So many spaces aim to be static and purely functional, without encouraging us to engage in any way except the ones that had been planned or intended.

As an example, he cited the difference between neoclassical architecture and some postmodern structures. The former appeal to a static historicism, while the later sometimes aim to highlight the subjective nature of our experience - they try to be more "fluid" while at the same time serving the purpose of buildings for time immemorial: shelter of one kind or another. His thinking really appeals to me: leading the viewer to see the world in a different way, to become more aware of how we see, how it may differ from others, and the duality of unity and diversity that disagreeing within a particular space can bring. In the case of the city's four transient waterfalls, it's about reminding ourselves that we live on an archipelago, surrounded by flowing water. He spoke of how New York City's skyline is so embedded into postcard-like or iconic images that we forget it's a moving, changing entity that's constantly being made and remade by our experiences and actions. He didn't actually mention 9/11, but that represented a particularly horrific moment of awareness in the changeability of our urban landscape. The fact that these waterfalls have been arrayed around lower Manhattan evokes for me a positive and renewing force just a stone's throw from the trade-center scar.

The cost of free, opera in Brooklyn edition

2008-06-24T22:22:00.007-04:00

Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu sang with the Met Opera Orchestra and Chorus in Prospect Park on Friday night. We had our wine (if not the best, at least it was free). We had our picnic dinner. We had a small hill and jumbo screens to see the performers well. We didn't have latecomers stomping all over our space like at the Philharmonic last year. We did have smokers. We were surrounded in a ring of smoke, you might say. Supposedly, there was an announcement at the beginning to please not smoke, but I missed it and thus didn't have the courage to go up to one particularly egregious bunch and plead for their forbearance. The singing and music was still great, despite the low-circling police copter during the first half. Although, seven encores is overdoing it a little bit, worldwide opera stars or no. (We left after four or five for the hour-plus subway ride home.) They should've just been honest and added a few of the songs into the printed program instead of going on and on as if people were screaming for more. Still, I admit I got goosebumps during Alagna's version of "Nessun dorma." Somewhere, perhaps, Pavarotti was smiling.

Jefferson storm

2008-06-24T22:02:00.001-04:00

Star struck again

2008-06-19T20:56:00.009-04:00

I saw Connie Britton today, the actress who plays the wife of the high school football coach (Kyle Chandler in a career defining role) on NBC's "Friday Night Lights." Readers of this space know how much I love this show. I was about 90 percent sure it was her, and then confirmed it for sure later on. We made eye contact as I passed, but I didn't have the guts to stop and gush about how great I think her work on the show is, and how glad I was to learn that it's coming back for another season, albeit in a novel (yet frustrating for me) arrangement where it'll be just on a satellite channel in the fall before playing on NBC in the winter. This is one of those shows that hangs on for dear life because it's not among the most popular, but it has a strong critical following. I don't know if it's strange enough to deem it a cult following, but it's something like that. I guess I could've stopped and told her all this, but it would've felt weird. That's what teenagers do, I thought. I see famous people pretty frequently, but it's usually the second-tier celebs (like Chip Kidd, who I'm pretty darn sure was finishing up a slice of pizza in his running clothes the other day near the Random House building) that cause me to stop and consider accosting for a moment of interaction, before usually scrapping the idea, all within a few seconds sometimes. One of the few times I can remember actually speaking to the person was - how's this for utterly random? - Amanda Bakker, the (now-estranged, I learn) wife of Jay Bakker, preacher son of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, who was featured in a documentary on Showtime.

Snapshot reviews

2008-06-16T20:50:00.006-04:00

-Saw recently and turned out to be a very sweet movie from a potentially naughty premise: Lars and the Real Girl
-Take Before Sunset, add more sarcasm, remove most of the wistfulness, throw in some Woody-Allen-esque moments and you get something like: Two Days in Paris
-Earworm through most of my Sunday: "Underneath" from Alanis Morrissette's new album, Flavors of Entanglement
-Strange moment from the Tonys broadcast: Stephen Sondheim's wry, I'm-not-dead-yet acceptance speech of the lifetime achievement award as read by a grizzly-bearded Mandy Patinkin.
-Currently reading and glad I broke down and bought the hardcover: Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff, the author whom David Sedaris once said keeps him going.

Pavlov's opera fan

2008-06-12T22:54:00.002-04:00

I happened upon the final scene of a Met performance of La Boheme on public TV. For a moment, I hesitated. Should I watch? Should I flip? Would seeing the end without experiencing the full piece ruin it for me? I couldn't resist. That scene in the garret is so powerful. I watched. And lo and behold, my reaction was the same as it usually is: waterworks. That's great art.

Ivy wannabe

2008-06-11T21:35:00.000-04:00

Memories of Chi-town

2008-06-09T22:01:00.005-04:00

The amazing honey custard French toast with chamomile creme anglaise, candied lemon and apple blossoms at Lula Cafe in the Logan Square section of Chicago. Touring Hyde Park, including Obama's house and the faux gothic U. of C. campus. Catching up with old college friends over soul food. Happening upon a random party. Finally seeing Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte in person - and American Gothic, too. Potbelly sandwiches and Vienna Beef hot dogs. The skyline from Museum Campus. The view from the John Hancock Tower. Dripping scoops of ice cream on a warm summer evening in "downtown" Clarendon Hills.

Midwest sojourn

2008-05-30T21:14:00.002-04:00

I leave for Chicago, Cleveland and various spots in Ohio tomorrow. Blogging will likely take a breather.

Bard in the Park Virtual Line

2008-05-28T23:59:00.009-04:00

Hamlet's a long play: three and a half hours with intermission. And this year's Shakespeare in the Park production is worth seeing. So why spend hours waiting in line to get tickets? We took advantage of the virtual line on the Public Theater's website. You log on anytime from midnight to 1 p.m. the day of the performance, and you're entered into a lottery for a pair of tickets. I got it on the second try. Granted, the house wasn't full tonight, so we probably could've gotten tickets just by walking up to the window closer to showtime, but still: I didn't know that ahead of time. And I'd imagine it's not going to be like that for the whole run. Especially if it gets half-decent reviews, which it might. It isn't change-your-life good, but it boasts some strong performances and a cool set.

Rendering alert

2008-05-27T16:51:00.004-04:00

A helpful commenter directed me to the above rendering of the new mixed-use development in the neighborhood that I've mentioned before: 4469 Broadway and West 192nd Street, with retail and doctor's offices on the first and second floors and condos the rest of the way up. Hugo S. Subotovsky is the architecture firm. Never heard of them, but it seems like they do decent work. And this starts to answer the question of how high the building's going to be. Eight stories on a slightly lower plot than surrounding buildings means it should just poke out a bit above six-story neighbors.