Thursday, August 19, 2010

Security is...

I am just back from Costco.

While browsing its aisles, I suddenly remembered that I was darn near out of cotton swabs. I steered my battleship-sized shopping cart to the appropriate part of the store and bought the smallest (and only) package of Q-Tips offered there. It contains three smaller packages of Q-Tips, each of which contains 625 Q-Tips. So I just purchased 1,875 Q-Tips.

If I use one per day, it will take me five years, one month and eighteen days to use them up. I still have nine swabs from the old package left so I'll run out on Friday, October 16, 2015. That's assuming Carolyn doesn't sneak in and "borrow" some.

Maybe I'll go back tomorrow and get her a box. That way, I know I'm set through 10/16/15. In a world where so much in uncertain, it's nice to have one thing in your life you can count on.

• Posted at 10:01 PM · LINK

Thursday Morning

A lot of things bother me about this whole "mosque" business in New York, not the least of which is that a large part of it is being driven by those who think "Muslim" is an evil cult, not a religion or that all Muslims are responsible for the 9/11 attacks or even that the proposed project is a mosque (it really isn't) built immediately adjacent to the "hallowed" grounds of the World Trade Center (it, of course, is not). It's one thing if that mindset and distortion of reality is directing traffic in the debate. It would be quite another if grown men and women were discussing it.

There are polls out where an amazing (and sad) number of Americans say no to questions like, "Do you think that Muslims have a constitutional right to build the proposed mosque?" Again, it really isn't a mosque so the question is distorting the true issue somewhat. But what's really distorting matters is that no one seems to be asking those same people what to me would be the really pertinent question: "Do you think that Jews [or Catholics or Presbyterians, etc.] have the right to build a place of worship anywhere they can secure a site?" If someone answers "no" to all of those, that person isn't necessarily a religious bigot or a shredder of the First Amendment. He or she could just be a strong supporter of zoning laws.

Me, I think religious freedom means that my government doesn't single out any religion; that it treats them all equally. The protests against the Park 51 project strike me, first of all, as one of those things people are screaming about because they think they can grab some moral high ground and put their political foes on the defensive. For these folks, it's not about the building. It's about who's running this country and they think this is an opportunity to show it's them. But at its core, this is the crusade of those who want their government to operate on the premise that Islam is not to be treated like a "real" religion. It's not unlike those people (many of them the same people) who want their government to operate on the premise that a relationship between two people of the same sex cannot possibly be a "real" relationship.

• Posted at 11:00 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Okay, here's the premise: Take "In Buddy's Eyes," which that Sondheim fella wrote for the musical Follies and rewrite the lyrics as if it were performed by and about Betty White. You got that? Fred Landau did the new words. I assume that's the same Fred Landau who wrote the book for the musical version of The Last Starfighter. And Broadway actress Mary Jay is the singer who does a great Betty White impression and that's all I know and all you need to know...

• Posted at 10:15 AM · LINK

This Nearly Was Fine

The PBS series Live from Lincoln Center broadcast South Pacific last evening — the same production I saw in New York in November of '08. What most struck me in watching it on TV is how emotionally diminished it was on TV. The material was the same. The staging was the same. The book and music were, of course, the same. And most of the cast was the same...

...so what happened?

I'm going to have to think about this for a few days before I expect to be satisfied with any explanation. Off the top of my skull, I'm chalking it up to the fact that TV just doesn't command the rigid attention of sitting there in a theater, almost in the midst of it (Carolyn and I had great seats) and with the characters breathing the same air you'e breathing.

It will certainly play well for someone who didn't see it on stage...so if that's you and it reruns on your local PBS affiliate, watch it. It's a wonderful production. It's just not as wonderful on TV as it was at Lincoln Center.

• Posted at 1:51 AM · LINK