I haven't started watching the big Beatles documentary because I have other things to do in the next year or two. But if/when I do, I'll be disappointed that they didn't include the footage that comedian Bill Scheft describes.
Poker Pooches
Here's just what you need: A history of paintings of dogs playing poker.
Today's Chanucah Video Link
The one song for this holiday I knew as a kid — and I think I learned it during my disastrous period in Hebrew School which you can read about here — was "I Have a Little Dreidel." I don't think I ever had a dreidel and if I did, I sure didn't make it out of clay. I didn't even know how the game was played. But here are the Maccabeats with a modern twist on that tune…
Have I Got A Guy For You!
Now playing on Broadway, just in time to mourn its composer/lyricist, is a new production of Company which makes two major changes, both with Mr. Sondheim's blessing. One, which Sondheim said in many interviews would be a big mistake, is to move it from being set in 1970 to being set in Today. The other is to engage in some gender-reversal, making the hero (Bobby) into the heroine (Bobbi) and flipping sexes elsewhere as applicable.
Does it work? Don't ask me. I haven't seen it and it may be a long time before I'm back in Manhattan. But also don't ask me because, as I wrote here, I don't really like Company as a whole. I like (love, really) a lot of its scenes and songs but after seeing umpteen productions, I decided I don't like it much as a whole.
A tiny part of that may be personal. Bobby (male) is/was a 35-year-old who has never been married. The first time I saw this show, I was probably around 35 and I'd never been married. Nothing that Bobby says, does, experiences or sings relates in the slightest to anything in my life. I don't know if I understand his reasons or issues but I'm pretty sure they in no way approximate mine…and now as I am close to twice that age and still don't want to marry, that's still true. But apart from that, I still don't think the tales of Bobby coalesce into the changes he undergoes leading up to "Being Alive." The character just doesn't make sense to me and neither do a lot of the explanations friends have tried to lay on me. I think they're fabricating something that is not there.
When I first heard about the gender-flip, it struck me as — and this is true of a lot of new approaches to old plays — a stunt or gimmick. But after reading some of Sondheim's comments — such as in this interview of him and the new version's director — I'm curious if this version would come together for me more than the original. And that's what I may never find out.
My Latest Tweet
- Chris Cuomo provides another reason I'm glad I'm an only child.
Adapted and Adopted
As I explained back here, I've never been a big fan of Little Orphan Annie in her long-running newspaper strip…or most of the other places she's appeared. The Broadway musical and the umpteen movies based on the Broadway musical are okay by me…just okay.
So I guess it's high praise from me that I enjoyed NBC's live telecast the other night of that musical. But what I liked was not the musical itself but a lot of the performances and the clever way it was staged and shot for television. The kid playing Annie (Celina Smith) was great. The lady playing Miss Hannigan (Taraji P. Henson) was great. I saw someone online wonder why the show didn't have more scenery and I suspect that was because Ms. Henson devoured it all during rehearsals.
The ensemble of dancers and bit players, young and old, were all great. Even the dog was great. Harry Connick Jr…
Aw, I felt a little sorry for Harry Connick Jr. He's a great performer but I thought he lacked the underlying "wealthy asshole" quality that Daddy Warbucks needs to have. Part of the storyline is that the almighty, all-wealthy Warbucks doesn't "get" what it's like to be poor at first and slowly learns a different side of humanity by having Annie on the premises. Connick seemed so nice from the moment he stepped into his first scene that he didn't seem to need to learn that.
And every review I've seen has mentioned the unconvincing bald cap they had on him. I think it looked phonier because of the glaring microphone they had on him. Its lines made it look like the bottom edges of the bald cap were peeling up. But he sure sang well, especially in the "N.Y.C." song.
All the songs sounded good and some of the choreography was amazing. Dance numbers on Broadway these days always seem to be infused with acrobatics and awesome physical prowess. In the recent revival of My Fair Lady, they more or less turned "Get Me To The Church On Time" imto a Cirque du Soleil finale. I just hadn't expected to see little girls turning hands-free cartwheels. Arguably, there was a little too much of that too early…and I guess what I was thinking was, "What do all those orphans have to turn backflips over?"
But I have to admit I enjoyed watching it all. That was about as good a job as anyone could do with the source material…which can't be said of most of these stage-to-one-night-TV-event musicals. I'd still like to see someone tackle A Funny Thing On The Way To The Forum, maybe with Nathan Lane and James Corden as Pseudolus and Hysterium — and either one could play either part. Wouldn't it have been nice if they'd had any Sondheim musical ready to air this week?
Today's Chanuka Video Link
This is a group called Kippalive…
Recommended Reading
Rand Paul — who, let's remember, is Dr. Rand Paul — has been going around saying that masks don't work. A fact-checker at the Washington Post says Paul is basing his assertion on one study and ignoring many others that say the opposite — and even the one he cites doesn't say what he says it says. What mainly interests me about the fact-check article is its explanation of how masks work.
Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 633
2022 is almost upon us and I'm looking at three comic conventions in Southern California next year. This is assuming we are past the stage where comic conventions get canceled for medical reasons.
WonderCon is in Anaheim from April 1 through April 3. The San Diego Comic Fest is in you-know-where from April 21 to April 24. And Comic-Con International is in the same city from July 21 to 24 with a Preview Night on July 20.
WonderCon is a big convention that covers comics, animation, gaming, anime, TV, movies and a whole lotta things. The San Diego Comic Fest is a small (by comparison) and intimate gathering that focuses mostly on comics, especially older ones. And Comic-Con International is a huge mother of a blow-out about everything that's fun and imaginative. If you go to one of these events and don't have a great time, it may be because you picked the wrong size one.
Me, I'm hoping to be at all of them but I have made this policy that has (so far) served me well throughout The Pandemic. I don't assume I can predict how things will be in the future. I don't think anyone can and while I have a lot more faith in the Dr. Faucis of the world than I do in myself, I don't gamble my health on anyone's predictions. I especially don't listen to the vast number of Internet Experts who have never attended five minutes of Medical School but are sure they know all about viruses.
And yes, I felt this way even before the news that…
A man who flew from Minnesota to Manhattan to attend an anime convention last month at the Jacob K. Javits Center tested positive for the new omicron variant of the coronavirus, Minnesota Health Officials announced Thursday. The man, who was fully vaccinated, was in attendance at Anime NYC 2021, a convention of all things related to Japanese animation, from Nov. 19-21.
I also don't believe in drawing any conclusions or worries from a report like this. It's a reason for caution, not panic. A few weeks ago, none of us had heard the word "Omicron" and a lot of us still don't know how to pronounce it, let alone how dangerous it is. We know how dangerous it might be but that's not the same thing. I have some real good doctors in my orbit and I'm going to wait until they tell me where between caution and panic this one falls. And where the next one falls and the next one falls…
Today's Hannukka Video Link
It's a holiday dance spectacular with Elliot Dvorin and the Key Tov Orchestra…
We Almost Never Mention Trump These Days Here But…
I didn't think anything could lower my opinion of the man any more than its current subterranean level…but the list of places he went and people he probably infected after he knew he had COVID has done it.
From the E-Mailbag…
This first ran on this site on 11/21/10. Everything in it is still valid except the line at the end where I say, "I've been at this for 41 years and so far, it seems to be working." It should now read, "I've been at this for 52 years and so far, it seems to be working."
From a reader of this site who goes by the handle, Dubba-hugh…
On every other blog run by a professional writer, I've seen the answer to the meme, "When did you first know you were a writer?" So, Mr. Evanier, why are you holding out on us? When did you first know you were a writer?
Disbelieve it if you will but it was in Kindergarten. I began reading Dr. Seuss books at a very early age. I largely taught myself how to read (I have no idea how) from the output of the Good Doctor as well as piles and piles of comic books, mainly of the Dell funny animal variety. About the same time I was first enrolled in Kindergarten, I was taken to the first play I'd ever seen. There was an investment firm up on Wilshire near Highland that had a small theater. I think it seated around 35 people and on weekends, they had local actors come in and put on plays for kids…some kind of invitational perk for the families of employees or clients. My Aunt Dot and Uncle Aaron were investors there and they got us tickets. So one Saturday afternoon, my mother took me to see a presentation there — a stage adaptation of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins that I don't think Dr. Seuss or his agents knew about. (Can you imagine? A real estate investment company doing something unethical? Good thing that doesn't happen these days.)
It was a perfect intro to theater for kids. Our visit started with some sort of director or instructor welcoming us individually and then because I was new to this, explaining what a play was and how I should sit still for it and not make a lot of noise…a lesson I wish they'd teach adults who go to the theater these days. Our welcomer also explained that Bartholomew Cubbins would be played by a girl and that this was a long-standing theatrical tradition, as in Peter Pan. Part of my job as a member of the audience was to pretend along with the actors on stage…in this case, to pretend that the girl was a boy. I didn't quite get why they didn't just get a boy to play a boy but it was no hardship to pretend. We then saw the play, which was the perfect length for a kid my age — about twenty minutes. I remember the lady playing a boy playing Bartholomew doing a deft little sleight-of-hand trick as she kept placing hat after hat (actually, the same ones over and over) on her head to simulate hat after hat appearing there.
I was quite smitten with that whole world and when I got home, I re-read and re-re-read the Seuss book. We always had a couple of his checked-out from the public library and my mother, wisely thinking I might want to contrast and compare, had made certain we had that one in the house that weekend.
The following Monday at school, we were given construction paper and crayons to draw on. I decided to write a book. In fact, the book that I decided to write was The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. I began to write and illustrate my version of it from memory. When the allotted time for drawing ran out, the teacher saw what I was doing and encouraged me to continue while the other kids did other things. So I sat there another hour or so until I finished…and she was so amazed at what I had done that she sent my "book" up to the principal, who was equally impressed. The next day, I created my own version of another Seuss classic, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, which I had not seen on stage but had read about ninety times.
I would later learn that this was a great way to launch a career as a professional writer. Many successful authors got their start stealing from Dr. Seuss.
So much fuss and encouragement was made over my little construction-paper books and about some subsequent, wholly original ones, that I just kind of assumed, "Okay, this is what I'll do with my life." In later years as I proved to be utterly inept at anything involving physical skills or math, that decision was constantly reinforced. Being a writer seemed like a great idea if only by default. If I stood a chance of doing anything well enough to earn a living at it, it was that. Years later, I met a rather stunning fashion model and heard someone ask her why she got into that line of work. She said, "I looked in the mirror and decided the only thing I had going for myself was my looks…and besides, I really enjoyed it."
I kinda always felt that way about writing and never considered any alternatives. When friends of mine were fantasizing about being movie stars or Los Angeles Dodgers or the President of the United States, I would stick with my goal because it seemed quite satisfying and, perhaps as important, quite reachable. I've been at this for 41 years and so far, it seems to be working.
Today's Video Link
Here's another Sondheim song I like a lot — "Our Time," sung here by Stephanie J. Block and a bunch of other Broadway performers…
When We Don't Know
The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to do something to Roe v. Wade. There are a lot of different opinions out there about what this will mean for a woman's right to choose abortion…so many opinions that a couple of them have to be right. But that also means a lot of them won't turn out to be right. I feel I should remind you that lately, every time SCOTUS Watchers predict what the highest court in the land is going to do, some pretty firm opinions turn out to be wrong.
So it may be as bad as some predict but I think I'll wait until the opinion is (a) known and (b) fully understood before I get upset or mad or relieved or whatever the proper response may be.
The same is true of the buzz about the COVID variant, Omicron. There's an awful lot of panic out there and not a whole lot of hard information.
You know, it's nice in a way to be able to get 24/7 news on our TV sets and our computers whenever we want it but it does have its downsides. It's been a while here since I've quoted the late journalist Jack Germond but it helps to remember when he said, "The problem is that we aren't paid to say 'I don't know' so we have to say something even when we don't know."
Today's Hanuka Video Link
Here are the nice Jewish (I assume) boys from Six13 who did that West Side Story parody I linked to the other day. In this video, they spoof Hamilton with a pretty impressive person introducing their performance…