If a tree falls in the woods...

and is heard, but the woodsman doesn't know it, does it matter? Which is a convoluted way of saying that ever since I changed the format, I lost the capacity to see how many people read this blog, and then I lost motivation to write. Which is interesting in itself, because I had all these little stories in my head and I didn't put them down here and I missed that. And it wasn't like I was getting thousands of hits (or even hundreds!) It was about 20 or so per day, which seemed a nice comfortable sort of amount. And why couldn't I rely on the 20 returning (or a new 20 or so coming in) without google analytics telling me so, and what difference does it all make.

Well, today I've decided it makes no difference. I'm just going to write anyway, and the numbers can take care of themselves (or not)

In my absence I found facebook, which is fun, but this is fun too and I want both :) So I'm keeping both - I shall write this and return and write more too.

What would people not know about you...

I went to a party the other night and the hostess asked us to write on a card something about yourself that others may not know, and then you had to walk around asking people if they were the person described on the card. It was a fun icebreaker. I never did find the person who wrote "I was married at 18" but it made for a good pick up line. Nor did we find the person who wrote "I had sex against the local school fence while it was being built" (presumably at midnight, because it far too busy a street to do it in daylight!) So lots of mysteries were willingly revealed.

I wrote that I had read tarot cards professionally, which one man agreed did not seem unlikely.

Well today I could write that I had testified at a senate committee hearing. I just think that sounds so grown up, and so uniquely American. Though my friends and I agreed that we could not be senators, because while most speakers were cogent and interesting, others were not, and everyone had to be listened to with equal attention, whereas we in the audience could whisper and slip each other notes when we got bored.

Gypsy

We saw Gypsy a few nights ago (a week ago?) We had seen the concert version but it's transferred to the Broadway and we had guests from London and so we went to see it again. I'm so glad we did!

Gypsy, the story of Gypsy Rose Lee and more, the story of her mother, is a classic American musical. And like all true art, it seems to change with the times, reflecting what is most important in our culture at the moment, leaving you breathless and changed.

First things first, Patti LuPone is a genius - no quibbles, she just is. So you are seeing a woman at the height of her powers in one of the last great roles for a woman of her age. And she brings every ounce of experience and knowledge she has and gives shades and nuances to a difficult, exhilarating role.

But what struck me this time, is the not the line that so resonated last time - Roses cri du coeur: I was born too early and started too late. That line was almost thrown away this time. What struck me in Rose's huge song towards the end was her hunger. Patti LuPone wore these awful barrel shaped dresses through out the show, making Rose vaguely sexless or certainly having no sensuality. But during the song Rose takes off her grey paint splotched coat and for the first time wears a form fitting dress. Now no disrespect to Ms LuPone, but she isn't one of those freakish celebrities who looks perfect, with legs to here and augmented breasts. Her body is that of a woman in her 50's, with thicker hips and thighs. But when she starts to mimic Gypsy's walk, all of a sudden this coarse, powerful sexuality comes out and grips you by the throat (or lower!) and takes over the stage. It was an amazing metamorphosis, Rose in all her frightening power. At the end of the song, Patti got a standing ovation (not at the end of the show, in the middle of the show, that's how good it was!) It was a master class in acting. You just saw Rose.

And one thing I suddenly realized about Rose (not about Patti, whose talent is overwhelming) was that she was not only a woman who was born too early and started too late. She was a woman whose desire was far greater than her talent. The theme of talent runs through the show, and one of the highlights is when the strippers assure Louise that she is perfect in having 'no talent', no talent is essential but not sufficient in being a stripper - you need no talent but you also need a gimmick, and a great, very funny song follows.

But Rose, and in a sense Gypsy Rose Lee too, with their desires without talent, are an eerie foreshadowing of reality TV today. All those people, whose desire for fame and attention far outweigh any talent they may have, all with some gimmick (the bitch, the geek, the romantic, etc, character definitions rather than skills) they are all Rose in her narcissistic glory, selling bits of their souls, or their children's sexuality, to get their moment in the sunlight, and growing weedy and scary (not coming up roses, but more like a choking vine)

And it made me think of the genius of Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents, the writers of Gypsy and how Art speaks to you, illuminating timeless matters. It really is one of the best things on Broadway right now.

So having seen most of the shows (or at least all of the musicals) on Broadway playing right now, my recommendations - go see Gypsy and if you have another night free, go see South Pacific (it's polar opposite in theme, but so romantic and beautiful.)

testing again

Testing yet again. I hope this works this time!

Doing what it takes to get by...

A dear friend wanted to go to the movies with me, but she, being an adult in her 40's wanted to see some sensitive French film, and me, with the taste of 17 year old boy, only wanted to see either Dark Knight or Wanted. So we compromised and went to the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side (97 Orchard St, to be precise.) There are a variety of tour options, and we chose the 'Getting By' tour, essentially exploring how families in the 1860's and the 1930's got by with the vicissitudes of life.

It was a wonderful tour! They have restored a tenement building in Orchard St, coincidentally the oldest building the block, and done a huge amount of research about the people who lived in it, and then took us into the building and told us two family stories based on the facts they had uncovered.

Just standing in the apartment, seeing how dark it would be without electricity, feeling how hot it would be, even with an electric fan and imagining standing there in long skirts and petticoats, I swear I would faint! And they were so tiny, ( 320 sq foot each) and held families of 2 adults and however many kids there were - often 3 or 4. And with no running water, and steep dark stairs, it just illuminated, beautifully, what the real conditions were for the workers of those times.

I really enjoyed it and will definitely take any tourists who come my way to it. Quite often in England there were beautifully restored regency houses (or even Elizabethan ones) to explore, and I loved going to them; but they were the homes of the very rich. Here we saw how the rest, how more likely we ourselves would have lived, and that was a valuable perspective.

It's so obvious how much harder lives were in those days (of course we know that, but seeing that corridor without electricity, just made you want to run away.

Definitely 2 hours well spent.

Testing

Since I changed the template things have gone awry backstage... here's my attempt to fix them. This is a test...

An Evening with George Michael

So we went and saw George Michael at Madison Square Garden last night. MSG is huge, holds about 35,000 people. At $250 a pop (maybe the gods were cheaper) but still, that's quite a haul.

We were so excited and the audience even more so. It was such a warm happy audience, cheering, knowing the songs, just happy to be there.

But it didn't go well....

Firstly, the ticket warned us that there was no warm up band, the show starts promptly at 8. Prompt was their word. And this being an audience of responsible adults (looking around I didn't see anyone under 30) the vast majority of us were there at 8, or at least by 10 past. But GM himself didn't show till 8.40. So what was that about? I mean I know that Kanye West showed up 2 hours late (4am rather than 2am?) at Bonnaroo, and his fans booed him, but we weren't the same crowd at all. If you're going to start late, have someone start the show for you and open at 9 promptly, like Annie Lennox did.

Anyways, this amazing screen backdrop - some new concoction of LCD television, that was maybe 60 feet high and 25 feet wide. Maybe more, but huge in any case. This backscreen lights up and music starts to play. Then a sliding door opens in the screen and GM walks out, great visual moment and the crowd goes crazy, I mean really ear ringing crazy. The first number is great.

But the screen is so huge, that it totally dominates the tiny man standing before it. And the screen doesn't show images of him, but rather abstract fractal art. So pretty quickly you lose him, somehow, in the shadows. Because the other problem was that the lighting was appalling. I'm quick to confess that I'm not lighting expert (though DH is) but George Michael's face was in shadow half the time and if he left the front of the stage and walked into the T shaped cat walk, there was no light on him at all.

And then, he would sing a hit, and everyone would be up and dancing, and he wouldn't build on it. He kept going for the slower numbers. And he got a stool and sat through every slower number! Frankly he started looking like he was too out of shape to stand for 2 hours. It was acutally odd. I've never seen a performer of his fame just keep stopping the show to sit down and catch his breath.

The other problem was that the sound was really muddy. I could hear the people singing around me more clearly than I could hear George Michael at times.

DH was so disappointed he suggested leaving at intermission. And why did we have an intermission? I've never been to a rock concert with one before. It just reinforced the idea that GM needed a break, he couldn't do it for 2 hours straight.

But we didn't leave and the second set was better - they found the spot light for the T catwalk and the fractals calmed down, but George himself never really filled the stage. Somehow he jsut appeared to get smaller and smaller...

It was a really disappointing show and frankly, if he puts out a new CD, I'm not sure I would rush to buy it :(