Month: October 2010

The Lydster, Part 79: Lost & Found; and Just in Time

My job on weekday mornings is to get Lydia to school on time.


My daughter has an innate capacity to find things that I have misplaced. There was a key, the TV remote, all sorts of things. She’s less skilled finding things SHE loses, such as the DVD remote, which she actually DID come across, after four weeks; it was in her art supply box, and I know I didn’t put it there. She also thought it would be fun to hide the mailbox key that hung on a hook near the front door, but doesn’t know where she left it; now I can’t get the mail until the Wife gets home with the only other key.

Note to Wife: PLEASE get another key made, as it’s been three months now and the key is unlikely at this point just to “turn up.”

One of the things I really hate is being late when there are real consequences. For instance, I hate rushing to an airport, train station, or bus depot to try to get on transportation at the last minute. My job on weekday mornings is to get Lydia to school on time, which is 8:03. Now we live a stone’s throw from the school; this is not cliche, this is the fact that I could stand on my front porch with a stone, toss it, and hit the school building. Well, maybe, I haven’t actually tried it. An MLB baseball outfielder or an NFL football quarterback could surely strike it. But it still takes some time to get the coat on, get the backpack on, lock the door, walk a couple of houses, cross the street and walk most of the length of the building to the entrance.

So when we left the house at 7:59 twice last week, it is cutting it way too close for my tastes. To be fair, the second time was Friday, and she had homework to finish, plus her mom forgot to give her some medicine the night before. But she does tend to procrastinate as well. Sooner or later, when she finally is late, when it takes a little bit too long to cross our busy street, even with the crossing guard there, she’ll figure it out. Meanwhile, it’s only my anxiety, not hers.

Congrats to Darrin & Suzy on the birth of Sylvie Grace; the name Sylvie immediately reminded me of this song. I e-mailed this post to Darrin, and he said, “She’ll be having my dozens of dollars!”

O is for Our Town

I should note that I was in a production of Our Town, some 25 years ago. I played the drunken choir director Simon Stimson, one of the characters in the cemetery in the third act.

How did a play written 72 years ago about a small town in New Hampshire, with no scenery and few props, “transcend the ages to become America’s most produced play”? Maybe it’s because it contains some universal themes.

From SparkNotes.com:
[Thorton] Wilder’s principal message in Our Town — that people should appreciate the details and interactions of everyday life while they live them — became critical…when the play hit theaters in 1938. It was a time of tremendous international tension, and citizens across the globe suffered from fear and uncertainty. Our Town directed attention away from these negative aspects of life…and focused instead on the aspects of the human experience that make life precious. Wilder revealed his faith in the stability and constancy of life through his depiction and discussion of the small town of Grover’s Corners, with its “marrying . . . living and . . . dying.”

Hal Holbrook as the Stage Manager

Specifically, the dying. Act 1 is the ordinary, even mundane lives of the townspeople. Act 2 addresses the budding romance of George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Act 3 is in a cemetery but has a flashback to a time about a decade in the past. This prompts a character to ask of the Stage Manager, the narrator: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?” And, of course, the answer is “No”. But how could we?

There have been 4000 productions in the last decade according to this CBS News video, which shows segments of a recent long-running Off-Broadway production that closed only last month. One of the participants noted that if we realize life while we live it, every minute, we’d probably be on Twitter, tweeting 24/7, which would puncture the value of actually EXPERIENCING life.

The 2010 NYC off-Broadway production’s George and Emily

While there was a 1940 movie, the play has always been the thing. According to Wikipedia, there was a live musical 1955 TV adaptation starring Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager, Paul Newman as George, and Eva Marie Saint as Emily. I remember watching the 1977 TV adaptation of the play starring Hal Holbrook, Robby Benson, and Glynnis O’Connor, though not the 1989 telecast with Spalding Gray, Frances Conroy, Penelope Ann Miller, and Eric Stoltz. And I HAD to view the adaptation of a 2002 Broadway revival starring Paul Newman, this time as the Stage Manager, a segment that can be seen here.

I should note that I was in a production of Our Town, some 25 years ago, produced by the FOCUS Churches of Albany. I played the drunken choir director Simon Stimson, one of the characters in the cemetery in the third act, who bitterly proclaims: “That’s what it was like to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those…of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know- that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.” Even in death, Simon seemed to miss the point.

Wilder was full of pithy sayings beyond the realm of this play. Perhaps my favorite: “If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good.”


ABC Wednesday – Round 7

A Brief Halloween Meme


From SamuraiFrog:

1. What is the worst treat to get when trick-or-treating?

Black licorice. Hated it. Now RED; that was a whole ‘nother thing. Also, I’ve never been a NECCO fan either.

2. What character from any horror film would you most like to play?

Dracula. He is primal.

3. Would you rather be a zombie, alien, or psycho? (why)

An alien. Zombies are boring, psychos are too much work. Aliens allow for greater character development.

4. How many Halloween, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street movies combined do you have on DVD?

That would be zero. Not my thing. I’ve seen one Halloween movie. But, in the day, the store I worked at used to SELL them on VHS tape.

5. What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?

I was pretty freaked out by Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. But THE movie that most terrified me was one I saw when I was nine or so, so it had to have come out in the early 1960s or before. Probably before, because it was a double feature with a Francis the Talking Mule movie, probably Francis in the Haunted House (1956). In the movie in question – I WISH I KNEW THE NAME! – there was this beautiful woman who men lusted after, but if they kissed her, she turned extremely homely. In order to regain her beauty, she had to bite the man on the neck, killing him, then blowing some powder. Seriously, my neck hurt for days.

6. Lamest costume you have worn on Halloween?

As a ghost, in a sheet.

7. Favorite Halloween treat?

Mounds bars, almost any candy bar without nuts or peanuts. I LOVE peppermint patties, or whatever they’re called.

8. Friendly-faced jack o’lantern or scary one?

Scary.

9. Have you ever had nightmares about a scary movie character chasing you?

Not chasing, but the aforementioned movie woman biting my neck.

10. The Best thing about Halloween?

The costumes. I used to really embrace costumes in the 1980s, when I was in my 30s, more than any other decade save for my childhood.

11. Strangest Halloween custom you’ve heard of?

Halloween lights. They’re like Christmas lights, only orange.

12. Person in your family who most likes Halloween (not counting yourself)?

Well, the daughter likes it. But the wife ALSO likes it because, since the daughter is allergic to peanuts, and I don’t particularly like them, SHE gets all the nut/peanut candy, sometimes with no effort.

13. Are you superstitious? If so, name at least one superstition of yours.

When I played baseball, I never stepped on the foul lines going to or coming from the field.

Music Copyright QUESTION

Martin Mull did a song called Licks (Off of Records), parodying the musical trend.

Two of my favorite topics are music and copyright law. When they converge, I’m utterly fascinated. Ann from New Zealand wrote about Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree, a children’s song I learned from a songbook in my elementary school. What I discovered from Ann was that the song was not in the public domain, as I had assumed, but was written in 1934 and is still under copyright. More to the point, the Australian group Men at Work have been successfully sued for lifting bits of Kookaburra and putting it on their 1982 international hit Down Under, where I first heard about vegemite.

But the theft wasn’t discovered until a judge on some TV music show misidentified Down Under as Kookaburra fairly recently. I find this hysterical because I recognized the flute bit as a swipe of Kookaburra right away, but I didn’t think it was substantial enough to be a copyright violation if in fact it was taken from a copyrighted song.

I hear a lot of licks off records, especially on live albums. In fact, Martin Mull did a song called Licks (Off of Records), parodying the trend.

Eric Clapton famously lifted Blue Moon and put it in the guitar solo on Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love, apparently without repercussions. Likewise, Bill Cosby swiped Purple Haze for the title song from his Hooray For The Salvation Army Band! album, apparently without legal action.

What songs have you heard that seem to steal from other songs without attribution, either music or lyrics? Note that Weird Al and MC Hammer, among others, always credited their sources.

Baseball on PBS

Still, the series may be more enjoyable for those less familiar with recent baseball history, or those with lousy memories. And I have to think that if I watch it a decade or more from now, it’ll become more interesting.

I’ve been watching Baseball recently. Not baseball, which I have viewed from time to time, but the TV “two-part, four-hour documentary film directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick,” BASEBALL: THE TENTH INNING. I’m a big fan of the original nine-part series and have even borrowed the expansive coffee-table book associated with it.

For me, I think the problem is that much of the information was a bit too recent, and the conclusions drawn generally unsurprising, which is to say, I noted to myself, “Yeah, I thought that, too.”. I remember watching, in real-time, the Braves vs Pirates NLCS, 1992 game 7 with former Pirate Sid Bream beating the throw from left fielder Barry Bonds. I recall well the 1994 strike, and how it almost destroyed the sport.

I remember the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, which revived the sport; I’m sure I watched, again in real time, probably on FOX Sports, McGwire hit home runs 61 and 62. In fact, when I saw the show, I said, “Number 62 goes right down the left-field line, just over the fence.” I DID forget that at least a sports writer tried to blow the whistle on performance-enhancing drugs, but was ignored; and, of course, I do remember the steroid scandal. Don’t know if I’m projecting, but I sensed a bit of, if not sympathy, then at least understanding about what drew Barry Bonds to steroids. It makes the interesting, if unoriginal point, that by Roger Clemens sullied by the scandal, it made going after Bonds more palatable; Bonds is black, a position player from the National League, and sullen, while Clemens is white, a pitcher from the American League, and at least more civil.

My favorite parts involved, unsurprisingly, the information I did NOT know: the exploitation of the players from the Dominican Republic, and background on Ichiro Suzuki of Japan.

Still, the series may be more enjoyable for those less familiar with recent baseball history, or those with lousy memories. And I have to think that if I watch it a decade or more from now, it’ll become more interesting. Also, for those largely unfamiliar with baseball, the website does contain a great deal of information from the past 20 years. The Tenth Inning will be rebroadcast on November 8 and 15 on PBS.

I did not know this: former Yankees outfielder Bernie Williams has played with Bruce Springsteen.

Speaking of the Yankees, I will definitely have to watch the broadcast of Game Seven of the 1960 World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees, when it will be broadcast on the MLB Network. Film of the game was recently discovered in the wine cellar of the late Pirates’ part-owner Bing Crosby.

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