The Long Weekend

The heat settled into New York over the past week, and while it took its time getting here (mid-fifties in May?) It is here now, ongoing now where.  Our apartment in Queens, like a lot of apartments in NYC, is not centrally air conditioned, and we are definitely feeling the lethargy that the heat brings with it.  The cat has taken to flopping on the kitchen floor for most of the day, while Laura and I have opened all the windows and placed a couple of fans strategically to get the air flowing.  It works for the most part, but yesterday I spent a good hour trying to nap because I felt so sapped of energy, and yet... I wasn't tired enough.  Getting out of the house certainly helped because it's inevitably cooler outside than it is in the apartment, and so I've tried to spend a good portion of this Memorial Day weekend out in the world.  Yes, we have window units, and we could put them up, but the cost, and at least for me, the feeling of giving in to the heat, letting it defeat me, has kept us from doing so as of now.  Luckily, rain came in last night and is cooling us down a bit.

Speaking of this weekend, it's certainly been a long one, or at least it has seemed very long in the best way possible, and I'm pretty sure this has a lot to do with my decision this weekend to dispense with television, films, and iPhone games.  I just noticed that I had been using distractions in my life, distractions that took up my time, but not in a way that I was really enjoying.  I was spending my commute dawdling away on this mindless match three game, and then at home I was downloading "Ugly Betty" into my brain for a couple of hours a day.  Oh I was still getting things done, but I got to thinking about what I would do with my time, if it were opened up.  How much more could I get done. Because, looked at truthfully, I was using tv as an avoidance tool. consciously or un, and I hadn't come to New York to waste in passivity.

And so this weekend, beginning Saturday, I turned off the television, deleted my iPhone app, and am really pleased with the results.  Of course I did the normal things, laundry and cleaning, but I also read - and while some might think that's just another distraction, it has always been a much more involved and active pursuit.  You have to commit your entire brain to the task.  At night, rather than wonder what we were "going to watch" my roommate and I played card games and chatted.  I spent time researching agents, narrowing my focus, and finding out which was the best way to reach out to those I was interested in.  But more than that, I became aware of my life.  And what else did I do?  I wrote.  A lot.

I've been working on a long form project since November, and I've devoted a lot of this weekend to it.  Of course, I've been spending most of the last couple of days slogging through and working on the thirty thousand words I've already written, and finally got to the point where I am facing the future of the story again.  And now?  I know why they say to write a rough draft without going back.  It can mean death to a project.  And yet, now that I've done it, reviewed what came out of my brain, I definitely have a better understanding of what I'm wanting to write, what it needs more of, and who my characters are.  So I can't say I regret the months it's taken me to do it.  But now?  As an experiment, I'm going to let my heart guide me.  Trust what I've built, and let go.  Let them tell me what to do, in a sense.  Will it be messy?  Yes.  Will there be contradictions?  Yes.  Will it make sense and be clean and written with an economy of words?  No.  There will be a lot of deep diving later, but I also think this will help me get to the bottom of the story that I want to tell, and I'm looking forward to it.  And also?  When I allow myself to really get lost in it and write what is "fun"?  The time flies.  It feels less like giving blood than it often does.

I'm to sure when I'll go back to television.  Not tomorrow, because I have too much going on in the evening after work.  And for Wednesday?  I think I'm going to extend the "sabbatical" through then.  Hell, if I love the results, I might keep it going through to the weekend.

It's time to Dim The Lights...For Now

It looks like the most recent incarnation of "The Muppets" on has bitten the dust.  I admit, I'm a little surprised.  Upon its debut last fall, while receiving mixed reviews from the fans (and from right wing mothers), was pretty well received by the "average consumer".  Ratings were good.  But apparently, they weren't good enough, and, so they dismissed their show runner and hired a replacemtn to steer the show in a new direction.  I, unfortunately, never saw what happened with the new show runner, if the new direction was better than the original, because I didn't make it that far in the series.

When I saw the preview, I was pretty excited.  It was fresh, it was different, and it was modern.  The muppets take on "The office comedy of manners" genre?  I'm in.  And yet, when I saw the first episode, I didn't feel that it quite lived up to its potential.  It was just another "The Office", but with versions of the muppets, slightly altered to fit into this format.   It was like an animated series that had no need to be animated.  The muppets were not needed here.  By the second and third episodes I was watching to support the company, to make sure it was as successful as it could be so that more projects with the muppets would be greenlit.  I was not watching for my own enjoymen.  Watching the show had become a duty, a fan's obligation. I became lax in my viewing, and lagged way behind, never quite catching up.    

Why didn't it work?  A lot of friends that I'd talked to mentioned "how mean the muppets were to each other", and it's true.  They are dismissive of each other, they mock each other, and the sitcoms writers expect the audience to laugh at their failures.  Fozzie and Scooter got particularly rough treatment, being written as "losers" in a way they never had before.  In a way, the muppets at their core, ALL of them, were underdogs.   But they had also always been optimists, dreamers who didn't let their current circumstances get them down.  And news flash-  the muppets have always been kind of mean to each other.  There were "hamhock" jokes tossed about, blatant name calling, karate chops, upstaging, heckling.  Loads of it. They were part of the slings and arrows that the characters faced.  But what they had also always had, was a gigantic overwhelming larger than life love of "SHOWBIZ".  All of them loved what they did, in spite of what it cost them emotionally.  And Kermit, because he felt responsible for all of these misfits, struggled and corralled to make that dream come true for them.  The muppets always reflected ourselves, our struggles to find purpose, and we commiserated.  And the product of their struggles was what we got to cheer, and enjoy.  This kooky, off-beat nostalgia.  I mean the show wasn't desperately grabbing for relevence.  It was a vaudeville show, in the seventies, highlighting novelty songs from the turn of the century, for chrissake.  

  

And then, something happened, and it happened before the death of Jim Henson.  The muppets realized their own success.  They became products, they became "cute", and they capitalized on it.    And they have struggled ever since.  And recently, in a desperate attempt to keep the relevance they won in the new films (which incidentally was a huge hit because it appealed to the Gen X Nostalgia for them) they mutated themselves into this genre.  

And Miss Piggy???  At heart, she, like Fonzie and Kermit and the rest, had always been an underdog.     She was never "on top", but always fighting for the recognition she felt she deserved.  Sure she was angry, but it came from a place of resentment.  It was resentment at being under appreciated and misunderstood- unrecognized for being the star she thought she should be.  It was that very essence, what Frank Oz was eluding to when he said that Miss Piggy was "A truck driver who thought he was a woman".  She was a fish out of water.  And then, sometime in the eighties, Miss Piggy, the character who played the television persona (how's that for meta?) realized that America appreciated her.  And the grande dame act started to come from a different place.  It was now coming from a place of privilege.  But she never lost her heart, until the most recent Muppet Movie, and this new show.  Which have taken the "Actress behind the character" and made her, the character.  

This show needed to make her an underdog again, and aware of that.  Losing her frog, seeing her leap through hoops trying to win him back would have been very satisfying, and if she hadnt done it with such a sense of entitlement, she would have.  If she had lost her job at the talk show, been demoted, and then had to fight her way back up, she would have seemed quite so mean -spirited and smarmy as she came to be perceived.  Yes, she could be bitchy, but that was the frosting on the cake.  It had never really been "the cake".

And now the show has been cancelled.  And, while I'm always sad when the Muppets aren't a rousing success, I now have hope that they will go back to the drawing board and try again, and maybe next time ( and there WILL be a next time) they will get a little bit closer to what it was that made us all love them.

BROadway!

The Tony Noms came out this week, and Tony season usually inspires one or two delightful and laugh invoking videos, because, what can you say?  Theatre people are creative, insightful and funny, am I right ladies?

But, and please forgive me for this admission, but are you at all like me, and when a friend sends a video (or in my case, more often than not, my mother sends me a video) is there a tiny, insecure part of you that shrugs at the commitment just presented?  Cuz, first, I'm gonna have to devote 3 minutes of my life to this video on faith (forget about the fact that I waste hours on netflix watching completely tepid television) and then I'm worried that I'll have to say something clever about it.  And then if I don't like that comment quite enough, I'll edit it to make it better, and then I have to worry about the fact that facebook people will be able to track my editing process and see that there was effort put into my "very calculated to appear off the cuff" comment.  And if that comment doesn't get any likes??  Forget about it.  I will wonder where I went wrong.  It's silly really.  In reality there is no pressure implied in these videos at all.   Said video is a gift.  Take as you please.  Or not.  I mean, that's certainly how I view it when I put a video on facebook, and I'm not at all hurt that hardly anyone viewed my post of Liza's brilliantly heartfelt and unironic, and therefore given the subject matter thoroughly campy performance of "Sailor Boys!" (c/u: Joe Hartman wiping away a single tear).

And anyway, when I do view these videos I am nearly always grateful, assuming the person who sent it is someone who's opinions I share and that we tend to enjoy the same things.  All of this is of course taking the long way around saying how much I enjoyed the following video, and how grateful I am that Susan Branch Towne made me aware of it.  Watch and enjoy!  (Or not, it's totally up to you) and feel free to add a comment (or dont'.  I certainly won't be offended either way)...

Now that you  too, have seen it, I can't say enough about how giddy this video makes me.  Watching these macho, bro-y dudes go ape shit over Jessica Lange's nominations and throwing back "Hamilshots" somehow validates my love of theatre, and the fact that I care much more about the Tony's and Oscars than I ever could about the play-offs or the Final Four.  There are others out there.  I am not alone, nor am I nearly as fanatical about it as some.  It's like a hilarious and kind of sexy warm blanket.

And if you enjoyed this video, you should check out Matthew Rodin's other videos at www.matthewrodin.com.  They're funny, art centered, and inspirational to anyone wanting to amp up their creativity. 

And for those of you who want to see it (and I know there are MANY) here's the previously mentioned gem that is Liza's performance of "Sailor Boys".  

"Judy And I" By Sid Luft, due out March 2017

Here, a little late, is the promised post regarding the upcoming Judy memoir by Judy's third husband, Sid Luft.  Sid is probably the most controversial man in Judy's life, as some consider him to be the one man who kept her productive and happy, limiting her pill intake and getting as close to "rescuing her" as anyone could (if it's even possible that one person can save another person, and assuming Judy needed rescuing).  Others consider him a control freak who used her, spent a great deal of her money at the racetrack, and alienated a lot of powerful in the film industry who were eager to work with Judy, but didn't want to have to negotiate or hand over any power to Sid, who was part of the deal if anyone wanted to work with Garland at the time.  Of course, the thing closest to the truth is probably that he was all of those things.  

I for one, always thought that one of the major problems that plagued Garland from the beginning of her life to its end, is that she was never taught to believe in her own strength as a person, nor was she taught to take care of herself.  As a result, she went from caretaker to caretaker hoping for someone who would offer her strength, stability, and a business mind that was after her interests.  In return, she offered everything she had.  She would give these people her trust, her love, her talent, and make her opportunities their opportunities.  Doubtless, some of the people in her life started with great intentions, loved her deeply, and wanted to help her.  However, truly helping her would have meant teaching her to manage herself, which might have made the person who used to do that job, dispensable.  That wasn't a risk anyone wanted to take.  And it wasn't an easy task.  I mean, it should have been done when she was a kid.  Instead, her childhood was spent teaching her to entertain, and to put faith in others to mold her image, tell her what to wear, what to eat, and who to be seen with.  

I find it fascinating that Judy was known for being a "less than skilled" dresser, when she had to dress herself.  I mean, as a young woman she was perfectly coiffed, well dressed, and on many lists of the most fashionable women, but that was because she was "costumed".  No wonder that when she got older and was in charge of dressing herself that she would often put it in her contract that she got to keep clothes from photo shoots and film sessions.  And she wouldn't just "collect" these clothes for posterity.  She wore them out over and over again, because she knew without a doubt that those clothes made her look good, and as a result they made her feel good.  And for someone who needed to be seen at her best in public nearly 24/7, especially given her later reputation, imagine how important clothes were.  

But back to Sid, and his upcoming, postmortem memoir.  According to John Fricke, Sid tried many times to write a memoir of his life with Garland.  After all, of the many businesses he had tried to succeed at, the only one which had really been successful was the Judy Garland business.  It was all he had.  And surely in his mind, he had earned that right.  He had loved her longer and harder than anyone else.  Selfishly?  Perhaps, but who truly loves unselfishly?  He had gotten into the business of managing Garland, largely co-erced by her (though he may not have needed much convincing as he had managed two actresses prior, which he had also been romantically involved with at the time) and never really got out of it.  He managed her pill in-take, got her to shows, is largely responsible for her Palace Theatre comeback and for her return to films in A Star Is Born, and then became more and more dependent on the income and ego boosts that derived from it, and made some very bad and some downright cruel decisions in managing her.  I'm convinced, that in many ways, he considered her his possession.  At the end of her life he had convinced her to sign away a tremendous amount of control to him, in which amounted to a contract of indentured servitude where he controlled everything.  When reviewed by a judge, he reported that he wouldn't subject a dog to that kind of treatment.  

He viewed her as his domain so much so, that when he read his daughter Lorna's memoir, he stopped speaking to her, as he felt she had stolen his story.  Her response was that if he had wanted to tell his side of the story, he had plenty of time to do it, and still could.  Well, apparently, he had tried. 

Again, according to Fricke (a very trustworthy source as the predominating expert in Garland's career and those around her) he had tried to write a memoir several times, with a number of ghost writers, and all were rejected for being somewhat incoherent.  What is about to be published is likely a cobbling together of those prior attempts.  Randy L. Schmidt is credited as co-author, and his previous book about Garland was a collection of magazine articles and essays and interviews conducted with, and written by and/or about Garland.  So, it seems like he might be a good match for the material in its current condition, and if anyone can shape it into something, he might be the one.  

But what will this book give its reader?  What I'm hoping it will do is provide us with a number of humorous anecdotes, and earthy details of her life, things that will make me feel closer to her, like a know the real person just a little bit better.  It's what I loved so much about the book Judy by Gerold Frank.  It was an intimate account of her preferences, what made her comfortable, what she liked to eat, what she aspired to be, and how she lived.  Of course, it meant wading through a lot of self serving accounts by Sid Luft, since he had authorized it.  Is this new book likely to offer anything really new?  Perhaps.  

What I'd really be interested to read would be a sympathetic, but somewhat objective account of Garland's life, including Sid Luft, now that the notoriously litigious man has passed on and people can write the truth without fear of his vengeance.   

How To Get To Sesame Street

Last February, when I was visiting New York for the first time in several years, the event that made the most impression and certainly contributed to my decision to move here (as I figured a place that had something as creative and legendary as this was a place I wanted to be) was my visit to the set of Sesame Street, and the chance to meet Cookie Monster, Prairie Dawn, and one of my favorites (and a personal friend of mine of which I'm not ashamed to brag) Abby Cadabby.  Here's a video we shot at the time.

What I was not able to do at that time was share any photos of the new set, as it had not yet been made public.  Now that the set has been revealed I can show you a few shots taken from the street.  

Hooper's store is the same...

Although they have made some additions to the products on the shelves (all of which are made specifically for the show)


Also, Big Bird now has a little tree house area he sleeps in, with a picture of his best friend.  It appears I wasn't able to get a photo of the drawing of Mr Hooper framed nearby,  but rest assured it is there.

 Some new additions to the show include Abby's fairy garden...

There's also a news stand operated by the two headed monster...

There's the famed address...

And lil' ole me. 

As a kid of four, my mom, a single parent, went to work and I spent the day at Raggedy Ann Day Care.  Every day we would be gathered together for an hour and a half with a snack (usually a piece of orange and a cookie) and we'd sit in the darkness watching Grover demonstrate "near" and "far", learn that we could do more than we ever imagined from Maria and Luis, Bob, Susan and Gordon, and we'd watch as the clumsiest dessert chef ever standing stood at the top of a set of stairs from which he would inevitably tumble with a large number of chocolate cream pies.  Sitting in the darkness with all those kids, our eyes glued to the set, it felt like someone had created this special gift just for us, which is a major reason that "Sesame Street" will always hold a prominent spot in my heart.  

Rambling Rose

I enjoy my job, and let's face it, it is doing a decent job of paying the B-I-L-L-S, but it is taxing.  Sitting in front of all those people for eight hours, smiling, answering questions, some of which I'm receiving for the twentieth tie that day, processing requests, juggling priorities... it stresses this lil bitch out sometimes.  On a particularly busy day like today, I do not want to socialize.  I do not want to put on a brave face. I just want to come home, throw on my pajama bottoms, make me a drink and curl up in the darkness.  Luckily I have friends who understand and accept this about me, and on the occasion I need to hermit it up, they are pretty forgiving.

Does this mean I'm an introvert?  I know there is the old fashioned definition that an extrovert gets charged up from being around people, and an introvert charges up by being alone, but I'm not sure I buy that.  I don't think it's that simple.  There was a person at one point who tried very hard to convince me that it was true, but I think that was much more about making herself feel less alien, along with a good dose of projection.   Truthfully, I love people, and consider myself a people person.  I don't usually have  difficult time making connections, and I get a lot of mental rewards from being around them, and from pleasing them.  That said?  I also really enjoy when I don't feel like I have to be "on" and there is no pressure to be nice or to consider other people's emotions.  So yes, when I can sit and just take care of me, I re-charge so that I can bounce around and have fun later.  I don't think that makes me an introvert.  And yet, there are plenty of times when I'm at parties that I just want to pull away.  When I was in my twenties, at parties you would be just as likely to find me on the couch petting the dog, as you would find me laughing with people.  Sometimes that's still true.

But that said, I still really need social activity, and if I weren't to have it for a day I would probably go stir crazy until I got out of the apartment and stumbled onto the N Train for my daily dose of New Yorkers.  It's a conundrum... maybe I'm on the cusp.  But my Meyer's Briggs profile says extrovert.  I'm an ENFJ, for what that's worth.

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These days I seem to be a snot making machine.  I go through more than twenty tissues a day and am always finding rumpled up kleenex in my purse, or in my office desk drawer, or I'm desperately fishing for one in the garbage to empty more not into.  This is gross, I know.  And it's catching, so fucking watch out!!!  I was out for four days straight, knocked out with a combo of Day-quil and Sleep-Eeeze, which I think made the cold or whatever I had go away more quickly than it would have, but who really knows.  I've never been one who believes in slathering myself in anti-bacterial sanitizer, but maybe I should be.  Since moving here I have been sick three times.  Maybe it's just part of building up my New York immunity.  Is that a thing?

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There's a new book coming out in 2017, about which I have very mixed emotions.  It's called Judy and I, and it was penned by Judy's third husband, the now deceased Sid Luft.  Next post, I will give my thoughts on the book which is sure to be controversial amongst Judy fans, and which I will certainly buy, though I may hate myself for it...

Macys Beats Gimbels... Again!

When wandering the streets, running errands, or otherwise going about life, it is nearly impossible to forget that I am in New York City.  Sure, this may change as I continue to live here and I may grow jaded and become complacent, but I truly hope this never happens.  I mean, this is the place I've read about for my entire life, and come to see as the center of the American Universe.  So many movies, tv shows, and books use it as the setting for their stories, even in a somewhat incidental way, that nearly every nook and cranny has been memorialized and made even more special by being embedded with a well-loved modern "legend" of my life.  Macy's Department Store is certainly one of those places.  Nearly every American must have a metaphorical filing cabinet for visions and images of Macy's, the Thanksgiving Day Parade, with an entire drawer for the film Miracle On 34th Street, where we can easily pull out memories of Maureen O'Hara's patrician beauty, or find a precocious Natalie Wood watching astounded as Santa Clause sings in Dutch with a little girl who had, prior to that moment been feeling lost and alone in the world.

And yet, when I headed to Macy's for the first time yesterday, I didn't really think of it as anything to get excited about.  But then, as I got closer to Herald Square I started to realize how long it had been here, since the 1880's, and that it hadn't moved it's location since it's opening.  And as I headed up to the sixth floor to browse through the bedding, I encountered something pretty magical, something no one had mentioned to me before... the wooden elevators of Macy's, which have been around since 1920, and have survived major renovations.  

Photo by Benjamin Norman for The NY Times

These escalators, their solid construction, the polished wood (mostly oak) and their meditative rumble up the floors of the 1 million square feet of shopping space, are like a time machine.  You can't help but think of all the people who have stood on them in the nearly one hundred years they've been around.  And it was comforting to do a bit of research later and discover that they are revered by the store as iconic to the Macy's brand, and that those elevators are not going anywhere.  They will continue to make an impression on shoppers (no matter how subtle that impression may be) another beautiful detail in our every day lives.

And these escalators would be enough, but there is more.  I think it bears repeating that the store just went through a major renovation in which no detail was overlooked.  And yet, these escalated remained.  As did, the elevators.

I had to return to Macy's the next day, as I had purchased the wrong sized sheets and needed to make an exchange.  Well, since I didn't feel like riding the escalators six floors, I headed to the elevators, and found that much of the hardware has been left intact.  The photo above shows the elevator as it is today, missing only the switch that the elevator attendant would have flipped.  It's pretty astounding that Macy's keeps these details as they are, and respects its history as much as it seems to.  Of course, me being me, this fact has won me forever as a devoted Macys customer.  (That and their super amazing sales).