Maybe this time...

We saw a living legend the other night.

You know how there are just some people that you love, irrationally. You hear the gossip and get a whiff of the tabloid rumors and you just don't care. That's how I feel about Liza Minnelli. It doesn't matter what goes on in her private life, what show is a shambles, next time she's out, I'll be there again, with hope in my heart and love in my eyes. I just love her. And when it works, I remember why...

We went and saw the final dress rehearsal for her new show at the Palace theatre last week. And in the beginning, she was so nervous and oddly breathless, that I was worried. My friend, sitting next to me, snarkily said, 'you know she's only 62, she moves like an 80 year old.' And I said, '62 in Liza years, is more than 82 of anyone else's years!' - she's put her body through a lot of punishment, she's had 2 hip replacements and several knee operations and frankly, she moves like it. She moves hesitantly and painfully.

I've never seen such a warm and idiosyncratic audience. There were women with their faces stretched into kabuki masks of youth, and gay men in their 60's squealing like teenage girls. The audience was more than warm, it was a bunch of theatre moms in the room, all wishing their little egg on. They wanted her to succeed so much, they clapped every time she opened her mouth and gave a standing ovation at the end of the each song.

About the 3rd song in, she sang Charles Aznavour's What makes a man a man... and I thought, so many drag queens dress up and sing as Liza, and here's Liza, pretending to get up and be one of them, a lovely note of solidarity.

After that she got more comfortable, her panting reduced, and her voice opened. Her hand motions are so familiar, those 'jazz hands' that only she could pull them off. And yet she does, because they don't feel 'actory' they feel natural and innate. This is how she moves when she sings. She did tease us about her movements, acknowledging that she is older now 'you know how I used to sit in the second act, well now I sit in the first' as she pulls out a tall directors chair. But sit is scarcely the word as she writhes and moves, creating one perfect visual moment after another. I actually liked her better on the stool, she seemed more comfortable.

And when she sang 'maybe this time' (which was not in the original production but rather had been on her album first, I didn't' know that) I got goose bumps. She just sells it. She believes it and so do you, maybe this time she'll be lucky, as if she's had no luck in her life yet.

And that is Liza's astonishing gift, that she goes on stage is totally vulnerable, all raw nerves and that astonishing voice. So much talent, so little confidence, so much experience and yet no bedrock of knowledge, just that painful, wistful optimism, that maybe this time... for the first time...

Oh, it was a magic night.

I loved the second half less - it was all about Kay Thompson, her godmother and songs that she sang in the 40's which are not known now, and when you hear them, you know why... I kind of lost it for about 20 mins, getting restless but happy people watching (it's that kind of audience, they're part of the show). But when she sang New York, New York, the chills came back. To hear that iconic song, by that living legend, in New York. It doesn't get better than that. (ps it's not me shouting in the clip, (I was a good girl and didn't film anything) but it could have been!)

By the end of the show her hair was matted, she was sweating and panting again, and you were swept up in the moment. Liza gives and gives and gives (even in a dress rehearsal!) and you just have to love her for it.

I'm so happy this show is a success - for the audience and their enjoyment, but also for Liza, who I just love...

Most primitive sense

They say scent is one of the most primitive senses, liked straight back to the lizard part of your brain. And it's evocative, smell your grandmother's cake, and there you are, transported back in time.

For many years I wore Ma Griffe, and then, all of a sudden it disappeared from the shelves. In the age of the internet, I suddenly thought, I wonder if they make it still? And here I found it, at this wonderful site (great prices!) and I've ordered myself a new bottle, so the scent of my 20's can return...

Happy find!

Nice care...

I was reading an article in the nyt about the 6 habits of hightly respectful physicians and came across this posting in the comments afterwards (I love the comments, they are often more interesting than the articles, one of the benefits of the internet, that the article becomes the starting point and a conversation grows...)

During my residency we had a speaker from our professional society discuss some current state of the field topic. Somewhere in his talk he said something that has stuck with me. Nearly all patients don't know the difference between good care and not good care. What they do know, however, is the difference between "nice care" and "not nice care."

While being nice may not actually improve overall health outcomes it does improve the patient's experience and subsequently their view of our profession. There is zero downside to taking the time to introduce yourself, shake hands, and make them feel that their needs are going to be addressed.

And I thought, that’s so true of so many things. We often don't know the expertise required or the effort expended behind so many things, but we know when we are treated nicely or respectfully or not.

We are having a problem with one of our teachers at school, and the issue was that we didn’t know if she was teaching the curriculum correctly or not, but we did know that she wasn’t explaining herself clearly to the parents and this was giving her a host of problems that had nothing to do with her expertise.

And that’s where American customer service can excel or fail – if someone reads a screed from a computer screen with no feeling or humanity, the care might be ‘good’ but it’s definitely not ‘nice’ and you don’t feel looked after. It’s only when the other person makes a connection with you that you remember the service as good, even if they couldn’t do what you asked (at least they could explain – ‘the computer says no…’ to quote Little Britain…)

And that’s what I’ve been thinking about today…

More on Liza tomorrow (she was wonderful!)

more about coupons

see I was just ahead of the curve - check out this nyt article, basically I could have written it :)

cawing about the seagull

We went and saw Chekhov's the Seagull on Broadway the other night. I have this thing with Chekhov - somehow I only see productions of his plays with people with British accents. If I had known this was an English cast, I may have said no.
We studied The Cherry Orchard in high school (bc - before computers!) and I saw a teleplay with these upper class British accents and we all read it like it was set during an afternoon tea. And then our teacher cleverly showed us a Russian version, where we didn't understand the language, but the passion, and the energy - nothing like the stifled upper classes! I really want to see a Chekhov play done by Russian actors, I keep thinking we get the flavor wrong.

In this play Kristen Scott Thomas was just wonderful, horrible, awful and real - a really good performance (not a great performance, not like Patti LuPone in Gypsy, but a really good one) Zoe Kazan, who plays Masha, was equally good, a stand out performance. But all the rest were - to use a new word in the dictionary - meh. They were okay but I didn't believe them, a bit too declaratory and upper class British for me. I didn't like Mackenzie Crooke as Kosta in the first half at all, and while Art Malik as the doctor was good I didn't believe Peter Sarsgaard as the lover playwright Trigorin. So the men let it down for me. But I've been thinking about it, the themes and the stories Chekhov was trying to tell...

Coupons

It's the simple things in life that give me the most pleasure. I've been receiving a blizzard of emails (thank goodness no trees were killed!) giving me discounts to all sorts of things I don't want. In the meantime, I have a cart at travelsmith, judiciously filled with things I do want. But do you think I get a squeak from them? Nothing.

I continued to be strong, but they have the prettiest camel duster that I really do want, and I have nothing like it (once I went shopping with my son, who refused to allow me to buy a black skirt on the grounds that I already had one. And what could I say, he was absolutely right... so I didn't get it.) But I don't have anything like this!)

And then I had an idea - just because I haven't received a coupon doesn't mean that they don't exist. So I simply googled 'travelsmith coupons' and up came a list of hundreds of sites. The first one, retail me not, had a 15% off plus free shipping coupon and my significantly cheaper duster is now on it's way here...

See, small, simple savings = a happier me. And I'm turning so suburban I can't believe it, but at least I'm getting what I want...

new stories!

I have all these little anecdotes in my life and I've not been putting them anywhere, so I'm back... A few friends told me they missed me and hopefully some strangers did as well...

I've been on facebook a bit - I like it, those one liners which tell the world where you're at. I have friends all over the world and time differences often make it difficult to communicate, but with one sentence and a few photos I can see what's going on in their lives, they can see what's going on in mine, and a sense of connectivity continues.

We've been doing the middle school thing. Someone introduced me to the marvellous phrase 'option anxiety' and that is where we are at. In Manhattan (and indeed in every borough) you don't have a designated middle school that you just go to, like it or lump it. You have a choice. And in Manhattan, you have to fill out a form with 5 choices and you are guaranteed one of them. We have about 18 middle schools we could apply to. Some are easy to cut out - too far, too crowded, not good enough academically. But that leaves you with about 8 or so to visit, and to select. You are not guaranteed your first choice, but weight is definitely given to the top two. So what do you select and why...

And then all the parents and some of the kids go crazy. How can you make such an important decision (next 3 years of your child's education, the path to Harvard or drug addiction (not that they are mutually exclusive, but that's how it someone appears in parents minds - Ivy League or Destitution) the future and all it holds, balanced on that one choice!)with the little information given? You go on tours of the various schools, spouse and child in tow, with 100 other families (or so it feels) and lumber through the hallways, crowding them unimaginably, and try to see it without the hordes of adults, and would your small egg be happy, healthy and learn something here.

Luckily we are spoilt for riches - every school we've been to would work on some level, everything has pluses and minuses. Schools surprise you - one which described as dreadful, better to send your child to the wilderness than go there, turns out to be an ordered, structured environment, none of them look terrible, though often they are really hard to get to - and how does that work, in a city that runs on public transport, to have schools that are close to none?!?

In a fit of bravado I said to DH - let's chose the perfect school and we can always move, we've moved once every 3 times since we arrived in any case. Which is true, we have moved but always with in the same small area. We've lived in Tribeca the entire time we've been here. And on the way home, as I walked down from Soho, I bumped into 3 people I knew, giving me that small village feel, and I knew we would not be moving in any time soon. I really love Tribeca, for all it's changes - it's becoming so upmarket and UES to me (upper east side) and the artistic hobo feeling is definitely going away. Anything slightly old or shonky is quickly being bought out and replaced with something new and glistening. But I miss the $1 shops, and the sense that real people could live down here. Now only the rich can buy in, and it changes the feel of the place.

But I digress... I'm still in middle school search mode, and watching myself and other parents try to decode what would work best is a comedy in itself. I told one parent that I'm going to the PTA meeting of a school I'm interested in and she was both astonished (really you can do that?) and envious (oh, you have time) Well, yes, it's in the evening and I'm making time to go. I'm talking to lots of parents, for the good and the bad stuff, and trying to make as educated a choice as possible, and still it's a crap shoot - you can get into a great school and get the one dreadful teacher there. You can get into a bad school and find an inspirational teacher. So we're doing what we can with the tools we have - as is all parenting...