Shazam

Like every other All American boy who somehow made it into adulthood I have to admit I’ve always been a superhero fan.  Like every kid of my generation I not only loved them I became them in my dreams and fantasies.  I liked Superman and Captain Marvel (I said the word “Shazam” at least 10,000 times before I was twelve) and, for some strange reason I was intrigued by Plastic Man.  I loved it when the Pixar animated movie The Incredibles had both a big muscleman dad and a mom who had all of the talents of the Plastic Man of my youth.   Even through adulthood and into my dotage I still have a soft spot in my heart for comic book heroes even though my preferences still harken back to the originals.  For Halloween this year I’m wearing my Captain America socks and I will only show them to people who ask.  It’s not likely anybody will demand a look at my socks so I think my secret is safe.

Not Ready for Broadway

There’s a show in the works, previewing in San Francisco, called “Beautiful – The Carole King Musical” that opened there to mixed reviews.  One of the caveats mentioned is that, although good, it is not ready for Broadway.  I find this really interesting because it acknowledges that theater elsewhere, even though it is well received, is just not as good as it is in New York.
 

I was reminded of this just this week after seeing a performance of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.”  “Gentleman’s” had its debut performances, to great hosannas, in La Jolla, CA and Hartford, CT and it is now in preview at the Walter Kerr Theatre in NYC.  And, yes, it is not ready for Broadway.  And, yes, I admit that although it has not had its official opening (announced for Nov 17) and it is supposedly not kosher to kiss and tell prior to it, I say to hell with that because these “preview” tickets cost a fortune and I’m well within my rights to toss a match on the kerosene that is stinking up the Walter Kerr.  There are some funny bits and some semi-okay music and performances are more and/or less adequate and I won’t say much more than submit this advice:   hey, you guys, you are not ready for Broadway.  Get to work because there is a lot to do before November 17!

 
On a sunnier note I also took in a performance of a long-running off-Broadway divertissement called “Buyer & Cellar.”  Plot:  Barbra Streisand has a book out called “My Passion for Design” and the playwright Jonathan Tolins has fashioned a play (totally unauthorized) around the part where she limns the cellar of the old mill on her property in Malibu with a basement full of small, semi-authentic shops including a doll store, a frozen yogurt stand, a costume “shoppe,” etc.  He assumed that somebody must work down there and he has populated it with one caretaker who, in the play, is a desperate out-of-work actor.  Then he and the producers hired Michael Urie to play all of the parts, including Ms. Streisand herself.  It’s a stroke of genius.  Not the play; the casting.  The play is funny and sweet and kind of sad in a way and, at the same time, uplifting regarding the resiliency of the characters involved.  Urie is pretty great and I walked away not exactly on a cloud but pleased with myself for deciding to plunk down a lot of money for tickets, although considerably less than uptown.

On a side note I need to add that the seating in both venues pretty much sucks.  More and more when I go to the theater I am reminded of our present day airlines where you are crammed into small, hip-bruising seats with no leg room and you are expected to live with it.  Or, rather, endure it as best you can.  Or maybe you should hire Michael Urie to take your mind of your bleeding knees.

Happy landing

This helicopter, and several others, landed in my backyard yesterday.  Well, it was close by in Prospect Park, but I choose to believe this is the one in which President Obama was a passenger.  Security is pretty tight around our Pres. (oh, really?) so they are cagey about his exact presence.  But I sensed he was there, which works for me. 

HB to ME

Nice little birthday cake for a nice little birthday.  It says "Birthday Bro" on it which is superimposed on a little spider-web of frosting with chocolate shavings encasing the whole production.  Scrumptious white cake inside with a moist custard filling.  Serving for four.  It was a good day.

D as in Dislike

From the beginning (January, 2006) I said to myself, “Self, do not get into politics on your blog, it is the pathway to frustration and madness.”  Self agreed with me and, so far, Self has stuck to it.  But I saw this photo on-line and I thought, hey, in one’s own sphere it is really disturbing to find out someone doesn’t like you.  As a result you tend to focus on the negative(s) as opposed to the thousands (well maybe a dozen) that actually do like you (and sometimes seek out your company).  So I wonder how it must feel to know that millions of people not only cannot snuggle up to your basic human warmth but their response runs the gamut from indifferent dislike to downright personal hatred so pure that the mere sight of a photo like this is a blow to the senses.  These two otherwise rational people must be totally unaware of the response they engender, otherwise how could they go on?  Of course limitless funds and plastic must play a part but their world is truly a fool’s paradise made of artifice and self-delusion.  I know this has a liberal bias and I should ring in President Obama as a counterweight but, heck, he is the legally elected Commander-In-Chief and deserves a break and, besides it’s my blog.

Catching some zzzzzz

I’m a dreamer.  No, I don’t mean I loll around in a hammock and stare into the heavens and think deep thoughts.  I’m talking about actual dreaming, the thing that happens during sleep.  My dreams are often very long and complicated with digressions and sometimes scenarios that I would not have thought of while awake.  Sometimes I think I’m just a character in someone else’s dreams because there seems to be a disconnect with my own life experiences and the plotlines of my dreams.

I am usually alone in my dreams but sometimes I encounter practically everybody I’ve ever known, but mostly I deal with strangers of all stripes and ethnicities and everybody speaks in nice, unaccented English.  I do have body-stiffening nightmares sometimes (not often) that make me bolt awake like a character in a bad television movie, but mostly my dreams are benign and I get to do a lot of travel to exotic places and experience some pretty nifty things that have no basis in the facts of my actual existence.  I often get lost while wandering in my dreams but it never seems to worry me as long as I’m not cold or hungry (a bodily state, of course, shared with my actual, but sleeping, being).

 
I am sometimes a fabulous athlete, mainly basketball and competitive swimming or diving, but I also ski in graceful swoops and am purposefully airborne quite a bit with billows of sparkling snow cascading around my back-lit torso.

I also often find myself being able to breathe underwater and swoop around the ocean floor like a merman on Ecstasy.  In my dreams I am not fat and look great in a Speedo.

As I said, I travel a lot in my dreams and a huge bonus is that I get to see a lot of art; and it can be totally immersive.  Not just museum art in frames and on pedestals, but entire rooms and buildings and various vast outdoor scapes and scarps.  The art is usually breathtakingly beautiful and it is often high-color intense and indescribably intricate.  I have no idea where these visions come from but I like to think I share this dream-trait with some of the mighty of the art world who were (and are) able to get it down on canvas, or whatever, when they return to what passes for real life.  I sure can’t do it, even if I could remember the details.  And there’s the rub.  Unless I really concentrate, upon awakening the visions disappear, forgotten somewhere in my frontal lobe.

Oh, yeah, one more thing:  My dreams are filled with light.  I’m not sure how that happens since there is usually zero light in my bedroom and my eyes are shut tightly.  My REM sleep must be very active and my eyeballs probably ricochet around in their sockets like pinballs.  Sometimes I’m so busy in my dreams that I wake up exhausted.  But it’s usually worth it and I can catch up with a nap in the afternoon on the couch, perhaps to dream again.

"Oh, we are...

...Redskins forever!" 

Well, maybe not.  I’ve been bemused by the recent controversy over the Washington Redskins pro football team and the nature of the possible disrespect for the Amerindian reflected in the name.  The bemusement is caused by the fact that my alma mater, Tulare Union High School (in California), also used (and still uses) “Redskins” as their logo and it is splashed all over their personae including the school paper (the War Whoop), building facades  and various fighting-Indian pictorials and publications.  Beyond my own connection to the subject a Wikipedia item notes there are 62 high schools in the United States that use “Redskins” as their front-man to sell school spirit (and, probably, souvenir clothing).

While attending the school it never occurred to me or, I’m confident in saying this, anybody else that “Redskins” might be disrespectful to any ethnic group and now that I think about it I don’t think any of our Asian, African-American, Latino and Caucasian students and/or faculty gave it a second thought.  I have some reservation about this opinion but I don’t even know if we had any American Indians in the school or, for that matter, in the town.  “Redskins” was just a hook to bind us together and this logo was chosen way before my time at the school (founded in 1870) and even my mother’s school ring, class of 1929, had an image of an Indian on it.
 
I also never questioned the logos/mascots of my subsequent institutions of higher learning, Fresno State (Bulldogs) or San Francisco State (Gators).  They just were, although why SF State chose gators is beyond me as I connect that cranky animal with swamps and bayous, neither of which exist in SF.  If I had taken the time to think about it I might have made the assumption it was a side slant at the Golden Gate(r) Bridge but that might be too silly to admit.
 
So hey, now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of political correctness and I just might be sleeping through this controversy on the wrong side of history but, really, I don’t give a hoot about Temple University (the Owls) or the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs or the Tulare Union High School Redskins being “forever” as it is in the school song.  Yes, there is a bill afoot in the California legislature to make a change mandatory.  Fine.  Whatever.  Hold a contest.