We had a rather classic Christmas--enjoyed great dim sum at Hollywood East in Wheaton and then saw Les Miserables at the movies on its opening day. We'd seen the musical years ago at the Kennedy Center prior to its arrival on Broadway and enjoyed it. I wish I could report that it spurred me to read Victor Hugo's massive novel, which I'm sure would give me a whole different feeling about the story...but it didn't.
The movie made me recognize that this show is indeed nothing less than an opera, but having said that, it's an opera with some nice songs but falls short of total success in that genre. I liked many of the performances, including Hugh Jackman as Valjean and Russell Crowe as Javert, yet Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter stole the show as the delightfully villainous Thenardiers. It's probably been more than two decades since I last (and first) saw the show, but the songs are familiar so the surprise effect was lacking this time.
My prevailing feeling about the movie was that it was slow and long. It may have been caused in part by the use of sung recitatives. I tend to feel that these have diminished in impact once Mozart and Da Ponte had completed their operatic masterpieces together, which was near the end of the 18th century. There was an overlaying heaviness from which the movie never seemed to escape.
Some of the scenes were indeed spectacular, but in the end, this film demonstrated that putting anything resembling opera on film requires approaches and techniques that vary from even the more standard form of musical. The subjects and emotions are big--but they can overwhelm the project unless channelled effectively.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Safety and Security
On an extremely local level, there seems to be a never-ending run of people who push safety as a value overshadowing all others. In Washington, this manifests itself in pedestrians striding in front of traffic against the light, secure in their attitude that every driver will inevitably stop for them. The D.C. Department of Transportation encourages this attitude by putting signs in the middle of the road warning drivers to stop at every crosswalk. This department has always made little secret that its denizens hate cars and will do everything possible to make life miserable for motorists.
When right turn on red first was advanced as a time-saver, the then-director of this department ran around D.C. posting no-turn-on-red signs at every conceivable location. Now this department responds to local loudmouths who demand speed humps so we have those scattered all over the city. The signs warning of them are posted adjacent to the hump so by the time you see it, you have smacked the underside of your car.
Safety laws--most of which are totally unnecessary--are introduced as innocent-seeming rules which then are turned into strictly-enforced enactments and revenue producers. So it is with speed cameras--we first were told they were for safety; when everyone recognized that the fines were set at absurdly high levels, the Mayor and Council responded with revenue concerns. This was also true of seat belts. Recall that police were not to stop anyone for a mere seat belt infraction. Now we are subjected to "click it or ticket" threats from police who would prefer to stop seat-belt violators than pursue homicide or robbery suspects.
This trend also underlies the never-ending pursuit of total security. Some administrators have realized that you can't guarantee total security and you can go broke trying to get it. The security industry is happy to recommend more and more expenditure, of course. So federal bureaucrats whom no one wants to visit much less commit acts of violence against are protected by magnetometers and other fancy equipment.
The problem for someone in charge of a facility is the uproar he or she will face if an incident occurs. Media and others along for the ride will always jump on anyone who doesn't spend their entire budget on augmented security. And you can spend your whole budget on it--easily.
When right turn on red first was advanced as a time-saver, the then-director of this department ran around D.C. posting no-turn-on-red signs at every conceivable location. Now this department responds to local loudmouths who demand speed humps so we have those scattered all over the city. The signs warning of them are posted adjacent to the hump so by the time you see it, you have smacked the underside of your car.
Safety laws--most of which are totally unnecessary--are introduced as innocent-seeming rules which then are turned into strictly-enforced enactments and revenue producers. So it is with speed cameras--we first were told they were for safety; when everyone recognized that the fines were set at absurdly high levels, the Mayor and Council responded with revenue concerns. This was also true of seat belts. Recall that police were not to stop anyone for a mere seat belt infraction. Now we are subjected to "click it or ticket" threats from police who would prefer to stop seat-belt violators than pursue homicide or robbery suspects.
This trend also underlies the never-ending pursuit of total security. Some administrators have realized that you can't guarantee total security and you can go broke trying to get it. The security industry is happy to recommend more and more expenditure, of course. So federal bureaucrats whom no one wants to visit much less commit acts of violence against are protected by magnetometers and other fancy equipment.
The problem for someone in charge of a facility is the uproar he or she will face if an incident occurs. Media and others along for the ride will always jump on anyone who doesn't spend their entire budget on augmented security. And you can spend your whole budget on it--easily.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
No Chanukah Songs, Please
Seeing a plethora of Chanukah songs recently posted by an online enthusiast made me realize the awful truth about all of them. As with everything else about Chanukah when it is blown up in a desperate attempt to put it in the same bracket as Christmas, it comes up short. There are hundreds of years of Christmas carols -- enough to suit any taste -- and some of them remain musical delights. Now, I'll make no arguments for "Christmas-related songs"of the "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" stripe, but on the whole, Christmas carols have that quality of time-tested music: you find yourself humming them.
Not so with Chanukah songs. I'm pleased to see that there's no ancient tradition involved in "I Have a Little Dreidel" because I've disliked it almost as long as I've abhorred dreidels themselves, and the idea of enjoying a stupid gambling game as part of the holiday. Chanukah also presents one with the unhappy prospect of consuming latkes, potato pancakes fried in oil, and greasy at best, inedible at worst.
Even the ancient sages who decided what went into the Bible, and what didn't, had a problem with Chanukah. The Books of Maccabees, all three of them, were relegated to something called the Apochrapha, which is sort of like an Appendix to the Bible, as in not ready for prime time. So while I think those conservatives who bemoan a so-called "war on Christmas" are overstating their case by a lot, I do find myself agreeing with much of a piece Ben Stein wrote in which he proclaims that as far as he's concerned, he's got no problem with calling it a Christmas tree, since that's what it is, as opposed to a holiday tree.
Even our rabbi--when I was growing up--let down his hair where the futile and misguided effort to equate Chanukah in stature with Christmas was addressed. He laughed at Jews who seemed to want to decorate "Chanukah bushes" in lieu of lighting less-prominent menorahs. Yes, it remains a minor holiday, and since there are High Holy Days and Festivals, it is not at all dismissive to describe it as a third-level holiday. And there's no such thing as a good Chanukah song.
Not so with Chanukah songs. I'm pleased to see that there's no ancient tradition involved in "I Have a Little Dreidel" because I've disliked it almost as long as I've abhorred dreidels themselves, and the idea of enjoying a stupid gambling game as part of the holiday. Chanukah also presents one with the unhappy prospect of consuming latkes, potato pancakes fried in oil, and greasy at best, inedible at worst.
Even the ancient sages who decided what went into the Bible, and what didn't, had a problem with Chanukah. The Books of Maccabees, all three of them, were relegated to something called the Apochrapha, which is sort of like an Appendix to the Bible, as in not ready for prime time. So while I think those conservatives who bemoan a so-called "war on Christmas" are overstating their case by a lot, I do find myself agreeing with much of a piece Ben Stein wrote in which he proclaims that as far as he's concerned, he's got no problem with calling it a Christmas tree, since that's what it is, as opposed to a holiday tree.
Even our rabbi--when I was growing up--let down his hair where the futile and misguided effort to equate Chanukah in stature with Christmas was addressed. He laughed at Jews who seemed to want to decorate "Chanukah bushes" in lieu of lighting less-prominent menorahs. Yes, it remains a minor holiday, and since there are High Holy Days and Festivals, it is not at all dismissive to describe it as a third-level holiday. And there's no such thing as a good Chanukah song.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Corruption
This morning in the New York Times, we read about how pervasive corruption is in our society. States cut vital services to citizens so they can offer tax-free incentives to corporations that reduce the community's revenue and thus make it impossible to meet communal needs. This is done in return for promises of good-paying jobs that rarely materialize or endure for long.
Somewhat sleazier is the revelation that the Mets' benighted owners took into their investment ownership group the billionaire owner of a florist website that has specialized in defrauding customers for years. Wilpon and Katz were able to faze Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard into agreeing to a sweetheart deal that let them escape from refunding the truly ill-gotten gains they had taken from Madoff's phony investment pyramiding scheme. They continue to show total lack of perspicacity in selecting their business partners except that for some reason, baseball continues to let them get away with it.
Consider these examples when you wonder why no one commenting on the pending fiscal cliff dealings never seems to mention closing fiscal rat holes such as the ability of the hedge fund guys toreduce their effective tax rate below 15 percent or the continued existence of the oil depletion allowance. Better of course to threaten middle-class benefits such as the mortgage deduction or even valuable ones such as charitable contributions. That these business giveaways are unquestioned makes any effort to cut Social Security or Medicare obscene.
The more you look at the zillions of ways businesses can cut their taxes, you will realize the extent of legalized corruption that permeates our entire economic structure. The reason these deals do not come up on the public agenda is that both parties are bought by the corporate and financial interests; if you don't believe that, recall how Chuck Schumer defended the tax deals given to the hedge fund guys. They only helped sink our economy but don't dare touch their special deals.
Somewhat sleazier is the revelation that the Mets' benighted owners took into their investment ownership group the billionaire owner of a florist website that has specialized in defrauding customers for years. Wilpon and Katz were able to faze Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard into agreeing to a sweetheart deal that let them escape from refunding the truly ill-gotten gains they had taken from Madoff's phony investment pyramiding scheme. They continue to show total lack of perspicacity in selecting their business partners except that for some reason, baseball continues to let them get away with it.
Consider these examples when you wonder why no one commenting on the pending fiscal cliff dealings never seems to mention closing fiscal rat holes such as the ability of the hedge fund guys toreduce their effective tax rate below 15 percent or the continued existence of the oil depletion allowance. Better of course to threaten middle-class benefits such as the mortgage deduction or even valuable ones such as charitable contributions. That these business giveaways are unquestioned makes any effort to cut Social Security or Medicare obscene.
The more you look at the zillions of ways businesses can cut their taxes, you will realize the extent of legalized corruption that permeates our entire economic structure. The reason these deals do not come up on the public agenda is that both parties are bought by the corporate and financial interests; if you don't believe that, recall how Chuck Schumer defended the tax deals given to the hedge fund guys. They only helped sink our economy but don't dare touch their special deals.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Anna, Abe, and Liza
This week I was able to catch two most worthwhile movies and a revival of one of the greatest of musicals. The premier movie was Speilberg's Lincoln, which deserves all the high praise it has received. The performers are excellent--including Daniel Day-Lewis, who ranks with the best and most genuine actors I've seen play the part. Until now, my favorite had been Hal Holbrook, who starred in Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois onstage in New York quite a few years ago. Day-Lewis's rendition was in a similar vein as he affected what was likely the real Sangamon County accent (or twang) in which Lincoln probably spoke. Sure, you can't ignore Raymond Massey and Henry Fonda, but they remained themselves more than they were Lincoln, as wonderful as they were to watch.
Spielberg clearly tried to make his actors look and dress like their characters--Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, and all the others from Stanton to Grant to Welles, and even the secretaries who were the great popularizers of the Lincoln legend--John Nicolay and John Hay. Tommy Lee Jones has been feted for his inhabiting the role of Thaddeus Stevens, and I'm prepared to support him for any award based on this performance and the one he turned in as the aging husband with Meryl Streep earlier this year.
The picture was wonderfully conceived and directed; it provided a fine account of the legislative arm-twisting that characterized the effort to push the 13th Amendment through the House. As we approach another Second Inaugural, it's not too much to hope for the current President's aiming toward the ever-bright standard Lincoln set with his--which ends the film.
Anna Karenina is a whole different kind of picture. The English director Joe Wright takes on this mighty Tolstoy novel, which has been filmed many times before, by inserting scenes within stage sets. It's a device--neither better nor worse than others--but the film worked for me. Keira Knightley is both beautiful and believable; Jude Law, a handsome actor, appears totally plain as the almost-ministerial minister to whom she is married and unfaithful. Matthew Macfadyen was an absolutely delightful Stiva Oblonsky and Aaron Taylor-Johnson rendered Vronsky more inspid than I had ever recalled. Alicia Vikander was a delightful Kitty to see on screen. It remains close to impossible to capture this massive Russian novel in any film but Wright deserves some credit for the effort.
And then there was the Arena Stage's revival of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady, often regarded as the greatest American musical. Despite the somewhat mediocre notice by the Washington Post's reviewer, the Arena's production was excellent--good singers, good staging in the round, and an all-around enjoyable time was had. It did of course make me recall all the greats who made the original Broadway production and the film so delightful, not omitting Rex Harrison, who was hardly a singer, and Julie Andrews, whose Broadway debut it was. All the principals at Arena were excellent, as was the submerged orchestra.
The one role which the Post critic got right in identifying a weak spot was Alfred P. Doolittle. Until now, I thought this was almost an unbreakable part, but that likely had more to do with the memory of the great Stanley Holloway. The critic didn't point out that the actor playing Zoltan Karpathy did lack the brio of the inimitable Theodore Bikel, who filled the role onscreen in a marvelous performance. By the way, Bikel is still alive and kicking in his late 80s.
Fritz Loewe's music, with its signature Viennese lilt, has always been the strongest aspect of this show for me. We may disagree as to which song is the best, for this score resembles South Pacific in lacking even one clinker, but I will hold to my love for the one the performers have always favored, Show Me. Many years ago, in the 50s, when The Lambs feted Lerner & Loewe, and Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews were leading the tribute, that was the song, in my father's account, that everyone present clamored for.
Spielberg clearly tried to make his actors look and dress like their characters--Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, and all the others from Stanton to Grant to Welles, and even the secretaries who were the great popularizers of the Lincoln legend--John Nicolay and John Hay. Tommy Lee Jones has been feted for his inhabiting the role of Thaddeus Stevens, and I'm prepared to support him for any award based on this performance and the one he turned in as the aging husband with Meryl Streep earlier this year.
The picture was wonderfully conceived and directed; it provided a fine account of the legislative arm-twisting that characterized the effort to push the 13th Amendment through the House. As we approach another Second Inaugural, it's not too much to hope for the current President's aiming toward the ever-bright standard Lincoln set with his--which ends the film.
Anna Karenina is a whole different kind of picture. The English director Joe Wright takes on this mighty Tolstoy novel, which has been filmed many times before, by inserting scenes within stage sets. It's a device--neither better nor worse than others--but the film worked for me. Keira Knightley is both beautiful and believable; Jude Law, a handsome actor, appears totally plain as the almost-ministerial minister to whom she is married and unfaithful. Matthew Macfadyen was an absolutely delightful Stiva Oblonsky and Aaron Taylor-Johnson rendered Vronsky more inspid than I had ever recalled. Alicia Vikander was a delightful Kitty to see on screen. It remains close to impossible to capture this massive Russian novel in any film but Wright deserves some credit for the effort.
And then there was the Arena Stage's revival of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady, often regarded as the greatest American musical. Despite the somewhat mediocre notice by the Washington Post's reviewer, the Arena's production was excellent--good singers, good staging in the round, and an all-around enjoyable time was had. It did of course make me recall all the greats who made the original Broadway production and the film so delightful, not omitting Rex Harrison, who was hardly a singer, and Julie Andrews, whose Broadway debut it was. All the principals at Arena were excellent, as was the submerged orchestra.
The one role which the Post critic got right in identifying a weak spot was Alfred P. Doolittle. Until now, I thought this was almost an unbreakable part, but that likely had more to do with the memory of the great Stanley Holloway. The critic didn't point out that the actor playing Zoltan Karpathy did lack the brio of the inimitable Theodore Bikel, who filled the role onscreen in a marvelous performance. By the way, Bikel is still alive and kicking in his late 80s.
Fritz Loewe's music, with its signature Viennese lilt, has always been the strongest aspect of this show for me. We may disagree as to which song is the best, for this score resembles South Pacific in lacking even one clinker, but I will hold to my love for the one the performers have always favored, Show Me. Many years ago, in the 50s, when The Lambs feted Lerner & Loewe, and Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews were leading the tribute, that was the song, in my father's account, that everyone present clamored for.
The ur-American Holiday
Thanksgiving is the truly American holiday. Forget the Pilgrims and the Indians--I'd rather recall the times in the 1930s when people were thankful first for their emergence from the Depression and then World War II. Those times were highlighted for the holiday with the 1936 Thanksgiving proclamation of Connecticut Governor Wilbur L. Cross (yes, I know you thought he was a parkway) and FDR's in 1944.
As for the day and the dinner, I opt for the traditional menu. The wonderful smell of a turkey roasting filled the house and there were plain roasted sweets and garlic mashed along with root vegetables and my daughter's brussels sprouts concoction (there always has to be a brussels sprout concoction--but this one was good) and her cranberry-orange sauce, with our traditional add-on, a nice salad, followed of course by the pumpkin pie (mine) and the apple pie (Vanessa's) and the pumpkin cheesecake (courtesy of Judyt Mandel).
This year we have a lot for which to be thankful. I could start with the election and then the happy chance that kept us on the edge of the Hurricane zone a few weeks ago, but most of all, Eileen was discharged from Hopkins Thursday morning so was here to enjoy the day with all of us. And she's recovering, day by day, with her usual perseverance.
As for the day and the dinner, I opt for the traditional menu. The wonderful smell of a turkey roasting filled the house and there were plain roasted sweets and garlic mashed along with root vegetables and my daughter's brussels sprouts concoction (there always has to be a brussels sprout concoction--but this one was good) and her cranberry-orange sauce, with our traditional add-on, a nice salad, followed of course by the pumpkin pie (mine) and the apple pie (Vanessa's) and the pumpkin cheesecake (courtesy of Judyt Mandel).
This year we have a lot for which to be thankful. I could start with the election and then the happy chance that kept us on the edge of the Hurricane zone a few weeks ago, but most of all, Eileen was discharged from Hopkins Thursday morning so was here to enjoy the day with all of us. And she's recovering, day by day, with her usual perseverance.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
American Non-Exceptionalism
Both the scandal of hugely-delayed vote counting in several states, especially in Florida and Arizona, and the efforts by Republicans in those and other states to suppress voting by groups they wish to disenfranchise have contributed to putting the U.S. in the category of countries who do a poor job of conducting elections. People here like to think Americans do everything so well, yet the rest of the world is fast catching up to us and this is one area where many countries are ahead of us.
First, even a country new to national voting such as Indonesia has run nation-wide elections across a huge archipelago with fewer problems than we had in 2000 and 2012. That country had been a dictatorship of first the left and then the right for many years; yet when they set about running an election, it went off with few hitches.
Second, most European countries vote on Sunday. This means that working people have no problem getting to the polls and the nonsense about giving people a very few hours to go home and back to vote can be forgotten. The percentage of voters turning out increases, too.
Third, the excuse offered in Florida and Arizona--perhaps the two most evil GOP-administered states in terms of active effort to suppress voting--was that turnout was both higher than usual and unexpected. It turns out that it was neither. There were more people voting in 2008.
Think about how badly many states performed--and there were exceptions, the good-government states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, for example, and there were places like New York and New Jersey, where weather conditions made for problems far exceeding the usual incompetence--when you hear people like Romney continually calling for more responsibility to be shifted to the states.
First, even a country new to national voting such as Indonesia has run nation-wide elections across a huge archipelago with fewer problems than we had in 2000 and 2012. That country had been a dictatorship of first the left and then the right for many years; yet when they set about running an election, it went off with few hitches.
Second, most European countries vote on Sunday. This means that working people have no problem getting to the polls and the nonsense about giving people a very few hours to go home and back to vote can be forgotten. The percentage of voters turning out increases, too.
Third, the excuse offered in Florida and Arizona--perhaps the two most evil GOP-administered states in terms of active effort to suppress voting--was that turnout was both higher than usual and unexpected. It turns out that it was neither. There were more people voting in 2008.
Think about how badly many states performed--and there were exceptions, the good-government states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, for example, and there were places like New York and New Jersey, where weather conditions made for problems far exceeding the usual incompetence--when you hear people like Romney continually calling for more responsibility to be shifted to the states.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Yes, We Won!!
Even
though he kept a recession from becoming a depression, saved the auto companies
(from themselves), at least began to try to rein in the Wall St. crowd that caused
it all, and yes, got as good a health care law through that he could, Obama had
to take on a guy who would say anything and change every position to win and
then withstand ridiculous charges of being a Muslim or a Kenyan. Because he
wasn’t totally captured by big-money funders, he was also mislabelled as a socialist. Not only that, but although he did more for Israel than any other
president but wouldn’t make nice with the corrupt and reactionary Bibi, some noisy fanatics went after him on that – heck,
I wish Obama had really blasted the settlers.
Elizabeth Warren totally understands how our economic system works and
how it needs to be reformed—as well as being the nation’s foremost expert on
bankruptcy; wonderful that the voters realized she was hired because of that,
not for her vague Native American background that most of Oklahoma shares. We could almost call last night a real
victory!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Topic A
Of course, the election remains Topic A, at least until November 6, and in Washington, needless to say, indefinitely. This has been a particularly frustrating election, based on the following observations:
1. Media pack behavior. Never before have the media behaved so totally within a pack mentality. The conventional wisdom is somehow fashioned amid the sturm und drang of the campaign and hardly anyone dares to offer observations that challenge it. Now instead of merely elevating the uninformed views of people randomly interviewed on the street to high commentary, we are offered "tweets" and attempts at "zingers" emanating from "spin rooms"--it's all totally bogus. Steve Allen really had it right as to the significance of the opinions of the "man in the street"--they usually were idiotic.
2. Built-in bias. The media still is susceptible to slick operators, and Romney certainly is one of those. So Obama is decried as condescending, out-to-lunch, and off his rocker when he appears to be laid back in the first debate; Romney adopts a moderate, less contentious tone in the last and is praised as statesmanlike. Romney also blatantly discards his previous positions and rarely is called on it.
3. Campaign oratory. Wendell Willkie once admitted that "in moments of campaign oratory, we all expand a little." This time Romney has shown he will say anything and change any position to meet the immediate campaign need.Obama rarely exaggerates but the media are much more willing to turn on him and it isn't his incumbency because Bush II got the same "liberal media bending over backwards to be nice to him" treatment.
4. Obama's arrogance. The President has not received good advice or support from his top-level staff. He obviously doesn't enjoy these kinds of debates--since they aren't really debates in any normal meaning of the term, who of substance would?--but having agreed to them, he needed a much better strategy. His unwillingness to get down and work closely with pols of his own party also is hurting him. He seems to have few surrogates--few out there speaking for him. Bill Clinton has done far more than anyone might reasonable expected. Only at the convention did other Democrats show up, perhaps because Obama had not been there for them.
5. The ads. Yes, they're lying and awful. Apparently, as we have learned over decades, negative ads work. Some people clearly are influenced by them. It does make you recall that "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public"--I can't remember whether that was Barnum or Mencken speaking.
We do get the leaders we deserve. Clarence Darrow said it best: "When I was a boy I was told anyone could grow up to become President. [He was speaking btw of CalvinCoolidge.] Now I'm beginning to believe it."
1. Media pack behavior. Never before have the media behaved so totally within a pack mentality. The conventional wisdom is somehow fashioned amid the sturm und drang of the campaign and hardly anyone dares to offer observations that challenge it. Now instead of merely elevating the uninformed views of people randomly interviewed on the street to high commentary, we are offered "tweets" and attempts at "zingers" emanating from "spin rooms"--it's all totally bogus. Steve Allen really had it right as to the significance of the opinions of the "man in the street"--they usually were idiotic.
2. Built-in bias. The media still is susceptible to slick operators, and Romney certainly is one of those. So Obama is decried as condescending, out-to-lunch, and off his rocker when he appears to be laid back in the first debate; Romney adopts a moderate, less contentious tone in the last and is praised as statesmanlike. Romney also blatantly discards his previous positions and rarely is called on it.
3. Campaign oratory. Wendell Willkie once admitted that "in moments of campaign oratory, we all expand a little." This time Romney has shown he will say anything and change any position to meet the immediate campaign need.Obama rarely exaggerates but the media are much more willing to turn on him and it isn't his incumbency because Bush II got the same "liberal media bending over backwards to be nice to him" treatment.
4. Obama's arrogance. The President has not received good advice or support from his top-level staff. He obviously doesn't enjoy these kinds of debates--since they aren't really debates in any normal meaning of the term, who of substance would?--but having agreed to them, he needed a much better strategy. His unwillingness to get down and work closely with pols of his own party also is hurting him. He seems to have few surrogates--few out there speaking for him. Bill Clinton has done far more than anyone might reasonable expected. Only at the convention did other Democrats show up, perhaps because Obama had not been there for them.
5. The ads. Yes, they're lying and awful. Apparently, as we have learned over decades, negative ads work. Some people clearly are influenced by them. It does make you recall that "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public"--I can't remember whether that was Barnum or Mencken speaking.
We do get the leaders we deserve. Clarence Darrow said it best: "When I was a boy I was told anyone could grow up to become President. [He was speaking btw of CalvinCoolidge.] Now I'm beginning to believe it."
Friday, October 12, 2012
Baseball's Back
Yes, the euphoria brought on by baseball could quickly dissipate if tonight's deciding game in the division series against St. Louis goes the wrong way. And in D.C., that's bad because the sleazeballs who run baseball already don't like Washington--having abandoned the nation's capital for years. But for the moment, it's a wonderful time. Even the always-pompous Thomas Boswell, self-described as America's preeminent baseball scribe, suggested today that last night's Nats walk-off win that evened the series was the first real baseball occasion here. And in a way, he got it right.
This team can drive you crazy--as can most teams for which I end up cheering. They lose big--12-4 and 8-0, the latter when I went to the first post-season game in 79 years played here. And being Washington, everything is open to argument. After all, the Homestead Grays, who played half their home games here in old Griffith Stadium, played in Negro National League championship in 1948, and still playing stars like Buck Leonard then--Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Larry Doby having departed the NNL for the white majors, with Satch and Doby playing that fall for Cleveland in the World Series--I suspect they could have beaten more than half the major league teams then.
But then someone who got a big contract and a lot of abuse when he didn't produce--Jayson Werth, goes and hits the walk-off homer after a textbook at-bat where he waited and fouled off for the right pitch. I even remember Werth when he was being touted as an Oriole of the future playing for the Bowie BaySox ten-plus years ago. And as tall as he is, he was then a catcher, not an outfielder. All catchers aren't squat--remember Carlton Fisk and Jason Varitek.
It's wonderful to see how this turns the town on. Even last night's VP debate--usually Washington is the number-one audience for anything political--took second place, although the Nats had just won but the long-time local favorite, the Orioles, were just getting going up at Yankee Stadium. The O's also managed to pull out a Game 4 get-even special, with teenage phenom Manny Machado setting up a ninth-inning score.
A new game every day, including today, when I get to go yet again. Two days ago, disaster for both Nats and O's; yesterday, resplendent triumph. Now, of course, I so want to see the locals take out the Cards--always, like the Reds, the ever-dangerous "other team" so we can go up against my childhood favorites, the San Francisco, nee New York, Giants.
This team can drive you crazy--as can most teams for which I end up cheering. They lose big--12-4 and 8-0, the latter when I went to the first post-season game in 79 years played here. And being Washington, everything is open to argument. After all, the Homestead Grays, who played half their home games here in old Griffith Stadium, played in Negro National League championship in 1948, and still playing stars like Buck Leonard then--Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Larry Doby having departed the NNL for the white majors, with Satch and Doby playing that fall for Cleveland in the World Series--I suspect they could have beaten more than half the major league teams then.
But then someone who got a big contract and a lot of abuse when he didn't produce--Jayson Werth, goes and hits the walk-off homer after a textbook at-bat where he waited and fouled off for the right pitch. I even remember Werth when he was being touted as an Oriole of the future playing for the Bowie BaySox ten-plus years ago. And as tall as he is, he was then a catcher, not an outfielder. All catchers aren't squat--remember Carlton Fisk and Jason Varitek.
It's wonderful to see how this turns the town on. Even last night's VP debate--usually Washington is the number-one audience for anything political--took second place, although the Nats had just won but the long-time local favorite, the Orioles, were just getting going up at Yankee Stadium. The O's also managed to pull out a Game 4 get-even special, with teenage phenom Manny Machado setting up a ninth-inning score.
A new game every day, including today, when I get to go yet again. Two days ago, disaster for both Nats and O's; yesterday, resplendent triumph. Now, of course, I so want to see the locals take out the Cards--always, like the Reds, the ever-dangerous "other team" so we can go up against my childhood favorites, the San Francisco, nee New York, Giants.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Theatre & Baseball
Last week I attended performances at Washington's two top theatres--the Shakespeare Theater Company and the Arena Stage--the one put on by the Shakespeare was really a production it was hosting for the National Theatre of Scotland, called Black Watch, and at the Arena, I saw Kathleen Turner appearing as Molly Ivins, the wonderfully funny and iconoclastic journalist who died much too early.
Another attraction last week that I enjoyed was the last game of the regular baseball season here, the Nats v. the Phillies, on Wednesday. Although the Nats had clinched first place in their division, this win gave them home-field advantage throughout the post-season as they ended up tied with the Reds for that distinction but prevail based on their superior season record against Cincinnati.
Black Watch is the account of how the storied regiment found being sent to Iraq as frustrating as every other elite military unit found that country. The U.K. has been way ahead of the U.S. in recognizing that their leadership blindly and foolishly followed Bush II into two needless wars, as Blair became what the British press described as "Bush's poodle". The play features about ten enlisted men who cannot comprehend why they are where they are, much less see their comrades killed or wounded in a country that doesn't want them there.
There were endless warnings issued about the gunfire, explosions, and strobe that would occur during the show, and you were told toseek an usher to help you out of the hall if you needed to leave and sternly reminded that no one would be readmitted during the performance. So yes, there were mortar-simulating sounds and all the rest but I don't quite understand the need for all the precautions that we now are treated to everywhere. This wasn't even a performance where actors run up and down the aisles--which is when I could understand having warnings not to step out into the aisle without taking great care.
I found the play unsatisfying because while it traces the glorious history of the regiment, then about to be amalgamated with other Scottish units, the message to me was lost in a lot of the extensive physical action onstage, which featured much choreographed somersaulting and other motion. Also, I'm embarrassed to note that despite the many months Eileen and I spent in the U.K. some years ago, including some time in Scotland, I did miss a lot of the dialogue and punch lines owing to my inability to catch both the exact phrasing and probably some slang as well. To anyone who has spent time in the service, of course, the constant use of four-letter words is totally appropriate and accurate.
Turner got the Texas accent down well, I thought, and in general, I liked her performance as the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, totally irreverent Ivins. I first read Ivins in a Houston alternative paper in the early 70s when I went to Houston to do some legal work. She struck me as a comer likely to move right up and out from that limited platform--and so she did, on to the Houston Chronicle and then the New York Times--which under Abe Rosenthal, was not yet ready to allow her unfiltered prose into its strictly-edited columns--and thence on to national TV and syndication.
Again, however, as has been the case with too many one-actor bio shows--especially about subjects with whom I'm in sympathy--the play came up short. It created a portrait of Ivins but it lacked that extra punch she always had in her writing and personal appearances. Turner did everything she could, I felt, but she needed better material. Perhaps they might have included even more of Ivins's own stuff.
The ballgame turned out to be the best entertainment of the week,partly because the Nats managed to hold on to a lead and also because Teddy Roosevelt, perennial loser (526 times) in every fourth-inning Presidents Race--the four on Mt Rushmore are the competitors, won for the first time. There have been plenty of Let Teddy Win banners at the park and during the last week, Teddy was the main promotional subject--the day I was there, they gave out Teddy pins.
Some suggested that this was challenging a jinx--baseball adores superstition. Others said they should have kept it going and referred to Charles Schulz's assuring all Peanuts readers that Charlie Brown never was going to be allowed to kick the football. I suggest that it was appropriate for the last game of the regular season, since there's too much other sturm und drang when the post-season gets started. Maybe Teddy will go on another losing streak for a few months, days, or decades.
It reminded me of another great losing record--that of the Red Klotz-led white teams who were the perennial victims of the Harlem Globetrotters. They were usually, as it happened, dubbed the Washington Generals--and our current Wizards have but a slightly better record--or the Boston Shamrocks or Hawaiian Pineapples: as you can see, cliches were them. Their overall record against the Globies was something like 8-3,500. When a writer asked Klotz what it was like on one of those rare occasions when they beat the once- fabulously talented and still-beloved Globies, he answered: "It was as if they shot Santa Claus."
Another attraction last week that I enjoyed was the last game of the regular baseball season here, the Nats v. the Phillies, on Wednesday. Although the Nats had clinched first place in their division, this win gave them home-field advantage throughout the post-season as they ended up tied with the Reds for that distinction but prevail based on their superior season record against Cincinnati.
Black Watch is the account of how the storied regiment found being sent to Iraq as frustrating as every other elite military unit found that country. The U.K. has been way ahead of the U.S. in recognizing that their leadership blindly and foolishly followed Bush II into two needless wars, as Blair became what the British press described as "Bush's poodle". The play features about ten enlisted men who cannot comprehend why they are where they are, much less see their comrades killed or wounded in a country that doesn't want them there.
There were endless warnings issued about the gunfire, explosions, and strobe that would occur during the show, and you were told toseek an usher to help you out of the hall if you needed to leave and sternly reminded that no one would be readmitted during the performance. So yes, there were mortar-simulating sounds and all the rest but I don't quite understand the need for all the precautions that we now are treated to everywhere. This wasn't even a performance where actors run up and down the aisles--which is when I could understand having warnings not to step out into the aisle without taking great care.
I found the play unsatisfying because while it traces the glorious history of the regiment, then about to be amalgamated with other Scottish units, the message to me was lost in a lot of the extensive physical action onstage, which featured much choreographed somersaulting and other motion. Also, I'm embarrassed to note that despite the many months Eileen and I spent in the U.K. some years ago, including some time in Scotland, I did miss a lot of the dialogue and punch lines owing to my inability to catch both the exact phrasing and probably some slang as well. To anyone who has spent time in the service, of course, the constant use of four-letter words is totally appropriate and accurate.
Turner got the Texas accent down well, I thought, and in general, I liked her performance as the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, totally irreverent Ivins. I first read Ivins in a Houston alternative paper in the early 70s when I went to Houston to do some legal work. She struck me as a comer likely to move right up and out from that limited platform--and so she did, on to the Houston Chronicle and then the New York Times--which under Abe Rosenthal, was not yet ready to allow her unfiltered prose into its strictly-edited columns--and thence on to national TV and syndication.
Again, however, as has been the case with too many one-actor bio shows--especially about subjects with whom I'm in sympathy--the play came up short. It created a portrait of Ivins but it lacked that extra punch she always had in her writing and personal appearances. Turner did everything she could, I felt, but she needed better material. Perhaps they might have included even more of Ivins's own stuff.
The ballgame turned out to be the best entertainment of the week,partly because the Nats managed to hold on to a lead and also because Teddy Roosevelt, perennial loser (526 times) in every fourth-inning Presidents Race--the four on Mt Rushmore are the competitors, won for the first time. There have been plenty of Let Teddy Win banners at the park and during the last week, Teddy was the main promotional subject--the day I was there, they gave out Teddy pins.
Some suggested that this was challenging a jinx--baseball adores superstition. Others said they should have kept it going and referred to Charles Schulz's assuring all Peanuts readers that Charlie Brown never was going to be allowed to kick the football. I suggest that it was appropriate for the last game of the regular season, since there's too much other sturm und drang when the post-season gets started. Maybe Teddy will go on another losing streak for a few months, days, or decades.
It reminded me of another great losing record--that of the Red Klotz-led white teams who were the perennial victims of the Harlem Globetrotters. They were usually, as it happened, dubbed the Washington Generals--and our current Wizards have but a slightly better record--or the Boston Shamrocks or Hawaiian Pineapples: as you can see, cliches were them. Their overall record against the Globies was something like 8-3,500. When a writer asked Klotz what it was like on one of those rare occasions when they beat the once- fabulously talented and still-beloved Globies, he answered: "It was as if they shot Santa Claus."
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Class Actions--The Basic Problem
While I've tended to support the concept of class actions in the federal courts (and in any state courts where they exist), largely because they are one of the few means of countering total domination of our legal system by the large corporations as well as to secure recompense for flagrant disregard of public safety and even life by these corporate malefactors, it's become harder and harder to continue to justify that support. And the principal offenders are the lawyers who make huge profits from these cases -- the corporations do well too, because they expend a few million to make what could be much larger claims disappear.
But the lawyers get huge payoffs while the members of the class, presumably the people who have been victimized and whom the whole process should be designed to make whole, get ridiculously little from the inevitable settlements. The courts have been complicit in this process by approving the settlements, although restrictive appellate rulings have left the trial courts little leeway in this regard.
Increasingly, the trial lawyers who specialize in these matters appear to be just as greedy and mercenary as the corporate defendants. I probably get a few notices a year telling me that if I bother to go to a huge amount of effort assembling documentation for transactions that usually occurred years ago, I may receive a paltry amount by way of my settlement payout. So neither the victims get much of anything nor do the corporations who perpetrated the offensive behavior-- and make no mistake, it usually is egregious -- pay much compared to what they might face if any of these actions ever went to trial. Of course, they might beat the rap entirely but either way, they suffer little.
Here's an example of the payment section of a notice I received today which indicates how ridiculous and insulting the treatment is that claimants receive:
"A cash payment of Twelve U.S. Dollars and Fifty Cents (U.S. $12.50) to each Settlement Class Member who submits a valid Claim Form in accordance with the procedure set forth below. In addition, the Settling Defendants have agreed to pay Class Counsel’s attorneys’ fees and costs not to exceed U.S. $1,200,000.00, Incentive Awards to the Class Representatives collectively totaling $3,000.00, and the administrative cost of the Settlement."
So the mightily profiting lawyers and corporate defendants give even the tiny number of named claimants a quick three grand and are off and running to enjoy their very ill-gotten gains. One despairs of any real reform of this system because corporate lobbyists will merely use the disproportionate reward of plaintiffs' counsel to restrict use of class actions further. In this respect, Ralph Nader -- who has lost my support mostly for his helping Bush steal the 1980 election by running as a third-party candidate -- has been right to support the use of class actions. But I do think that plaintiffs' counsel could show a bit of good faith to the best traditions of the bar by acting to increase the share that goes to claimants coming from the lawyers' huge payout and yes, from getting the corporate defendants to pay up more for the good deal they are getting, despite their cries of oppression. They should only know what oppression really is.
But the lawyers get huge payoffs while the members of the class, presumably the people who have been victimized and whom the whole process should be designed to make whole, get ridiculously little from the inevitable settlements. The courts have been complicit in this process by approving the settlements, although restrictive appellate rulings have left the trial courts little leeway in this regard.
Increasingly, the trial lawyers who specialize in these matters appear to be just as greedy and mercenary as the corporate defendants. I probably get a few notices a year telling me that if I bother to go to a huge amount of effort assembling documentation for transactions that usually occurred years ago, I may receive a paltry amount by way of my settlement payout. So neither the victims get much of anything nor do the corporations who perpetrated the offensive behavior-- and make no mistake, it usually is egregious -- pay much compared to what they might face if any of these actions ever went to trial. Of course, they might beat the rap entirely but either way, they suffer little.
Here's an example of the payment section of a notice I received today which indicates how ridiculous and insulting the treatment is that claimants receive:
"A cash payment of Twelve U.S. Dollars and Fifty Cents (U.S. $12.50) to each Settlement Class Member who submits a valid Claim Form in accordance with the procedure set forth below. In addition, the Settling Defendants have agreed to pay Class Counsel’s attorneys’ fees and costs not to exceed U.S. $1,200,000.00, Incentive Awards to the Class Representatives collectively totaling $3,000.00, and the administrative cost of the Settlement."
So the mightily profiting lawyers and corporate defendants give even the tiny number of named claimants a quick three grand and are off and running to enjoy their very ill-gotten gains. One despairs of any real reform of this system because corporate lobbyists will merely use the disproportionate reward of plaintiffs' counsel to restrict use of class actions further. In this respect, Ralph Nader -- who has lost my support mostly for his helping Bush steal the 1980 election by running as a third-party candidate -- has been right to support the use of class actions. But I do think that plaintiffs' counsel could show a bit of good faith to the best traditions of the bar by acting to increase the share that goes to claimants coming from the lawyers' huge payout and yes, from getting the corporate defendants to pay up more for the good deal they are getting, despite their cries of oppression. They should only know what oppression really is.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Ibsen and Inge at the Shaw Fest
It turned out that the plays we wanted to see on the day we had to go to the Shaw Festival were Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba; both productions were terrific, although the weight of the combined drama for the day did make us consider whether we might have lightened the atmosphere by seeing an adaptation of the Howard Hawks movie, His Girl Friday, which itself was an adaptation of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur classic play, The Front Page.
This year's Shaw, which was playing the next day, seemed less world-shaking: The Millionairess and Misalliance. Normally, had they been on the day we were available, I might have opted for at least one, having seen neither previously. But, of what we could choose from, we felt very pleased with the quality of the acting and the continued shine of the two works.
Even in our age of instant obsolescence, Ibsen remains. to use the cliche, relevant. I felt Hedda was the flip side of Nora in A Doll's House, in that she is a spoiled, arrogant, and yes, somewhat evil, version of the bored Madame Bovary. Yet she never loses our interest because she seems so much more clever than the members of the rather unimpressive society we meet in the town where she is stuck. Only Judge Brack, whose role anticipates Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, is on to her, and yet he too would enjoy the chance for a fling, even at his comparatively advanced age.
Doc and Lola in Sheba are closer to us in time--around 1950 in some Midwestern city. Inge was the voice of the disaffected in the Midwest, just as his contemporaries Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller dealt with the South and the Northeast, respectively. People seethe beneath the veneer of politeness and their pretense of caring for one another. Old grievances fester and emerge with application of stimulants such as alcohol. Sex also rears its head--the complications are intensified by our knowledge that Inge was gay and in the closet and that his depression, also brought on heavily by his repeated failures to replicate the wild success on Broadway of his four best plays, of which this was the first, led to his suicide.
This was our first trip to this festival, situated in the incredibly twee little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, which is just up the road a piece from the Canadian side of the Falls. The main drag reeks of gran turismo but after a day or so, it becomes pleasant. The floral displays are marvelous and some of the restaurants are excellent. The Canadian chain, Tim Horton's, is far superior to its closest U.S. equivalent, Dunkin Donuts. They had wonderful hot apple cider, for example. This is also a wine region, with wineries lining most of the main routes between the border crossings and the town.
I'm not entirely clear as to how they came to hold an annual celebration of G.B.S. but as a Shavian--in that I've enjoyed seeing his plays over the years, I'm glad they decided to do it. After all, what they call "the other festival" has no more connection with its honoree than the name of his birthplace. Driving through central and western, heck, all of upstate New York in the summer is always delightful, anyway. We passed through Geneseo for the first time on the way back, where the now highly-regarded state university is heralded as one of the nation's best smaller campuses.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Deerslayers Lost in the Stars
Cooperstown is no longer just about baseball. Now, a walk down Main Street might persuade you that baseball in this burg isn't everything, it's the only thing. Lots of souvenir shops beckon, but try as I might, I failed to find one where I could buy a Vic Raschi jersey--and none online so far either. But the Baseball Museum is terrific--exhibits much improved, lots of controversial issues are included, although the party line can still rankle, e.g., the theme that baseball expansion beginning in the early 50s was a good thing. And don't get me started on the designated hitter.
Anyway, it's lots of fun. They still show "Who's on First" over and over, and it's still better than their big new baseball celluloid extravaganza. But you can also listen to Mel Allen or Bob Prince or Red Barber call some innings--and clearly no one has yet figured out what to do about the steroids issue. The Hall of Fame itself--all those plaques--is frankly of little interest; the only importance of course is whether someone's in or out of it. It perfectly reflects the underlying chicanery and corruption that permeates the history of the game, so that's why Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver and Pete Rose should be there. Heck, they finally let Leo Durocher in, but only after he was dead long enough so they didn't have to see him standing up on the podium.
Eight miles or so up Otsego Lake--the Glimmerglass of the Fenimore Cooper novels--the Glimmerglass Opera Festival resides in a delightfully-sized theater. The highlight of our visit was the production of Kurt Weill's last musical work, Lost in the Stars, drawn from Alan Paton's novel of the immediate pre-apartheid times in South Africa, Cry, the Beloved Country. It's a magnificent piece of musical theater--denominated "musical tragedy" by Weill. The summer's artist-in-residence, baritone Eric Owens, played the lead and brought the whole show to the emotional heights it clearly could attain. He has both a fantastic voice and magnificent presence, both celebrated in the past few years as he has made his mark at the Met playing Alberich in two of Wagner's Ring operas--Das Rheingold and Goetterdaemerung.
The same night he was Amonasro in the "chamber opera" production of what usually is regarded as the last truly grand opera in the standard repertoire, Aida. While he was also wonderful in this traditional baritone role, he just blew the audience away as Stephen Kumalo in Lost in the Stars. The Aida production took up on the war theme, which is usually kept offstage in the opera. So there are uniformed soldiers all over the place and a unit set serves well to focus attention on the violence underlying the love triangle between tenor, soprano, and mezzo.
All the voices were fine, as was the conducting by the director of the Cairo Opera. We had earlier heard the Weill conductor, John DeMain, discuss how the production had restored some of Weill's original songs and added a reprise of the title song. Weill remains a fascinating 20th century composer--both for his work in Germany, such as The Threepenny Opera, written with Brecht's lyrics, and then after he fled to the States, his several Broadway shows, plus movie scores and other work. He was a major player in the movement of the 40s and 50s that brought operatic voices into Broadway musicals and created musicals than verged on the operatic. Gershwin really began this effort with Porgy and Bess, and Richard Rodgers built on that, especially with Carousel, as did Weill; the latter two produced great work despite the vast stylistic differences.
Books and lyrics were always the big problem, in my view, and George Gershwin, aided by his superb lyricist, his brother Ira, might have been the luckiest. I find that Oscar Hammerstein's words still seem heavy-handed and I expected little better from Maxwell Anderson's work here for Weill. Anderson was a major American playwright who is just about forgotten today, and surprisingly, he did a nice job with Paton's classic. Weill was well-served on an earlier musical, Lady in the Dark, by securing the services of Ira Gershwin for the first time since George's death.
As out-of-towners hitting two performances on the last day of the festival, we were invited to a picnic with the artistic director and some heavy hitters, that was moved indoors by a sudden shower but which was enjoyable anyway. We sat with a delightful lady who hosts the all-night classical music program on WQXR in New York and had delivered a lecture on Aida's relevance to the current Egyptian political currents.
By the by, should you find yourself in Cooperstown any time soon, and need to dine in what may be the most thriving metropolis in upstate New York, I'd recommend the New York Pizzeria, which is a short ride from the center of town. On the way north, we passed through Richfield Springs on U.S. 20, the old east-west route across New York State. Not only is the breakfast great at the Tally Ho, but there's even a branch of the New York Pizzeria down the street.
Anyway, it's lots of fun. They still show "Who's on First" over and over, and it's still better than their big new baseball celluloid extravaganza. But you can also listen to Mel Allen or Bob Prince or Red Barber call some innings--and clearly no one has yet figured out what to do about the steroids issue. The Hall of Fame itself--all those plaques--is frankly of little interest; the only importance of course is whether someone's in or out of it. It perfectly reflects the underlying chicanery and corruption that permeates the history of the game, so that's why Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver and Pete Rose should be there. Heck, they finally let Leo Durocher in, but only after he was dead long enough so they didn't have to see him standing up on the podium.
Eight miles or so up Otsego Lake--the Glimmerglass of the Fenimore Cooper novels--the Glimmerglass Opera Festival resides in a delightfully-sized theater. The highlight of our visit was the production of Kurt Weill's last musical work, Lost in the Stars, drawn from Alan Paton's novel of the immediate pre-apartheid times in South Africa, Cry, the Beloved Country. It's a magnificent piece of musical theater--denominated "musical tragedy" by Weill. The summer's artist-in-residence, baritone Eric Owens, played the lead and brought the whole show to the emotional heights it clearly could attain. He has both a fantastic voice and magnificent presence, both celebrated in the past few years as he has made his mark at the Met playing Alberich in two of Wagner's Ring operas--Das Rheingold and Goetterdaemerung.
The same night he was Amonasro in the "chamber opera" production of what usually is regarded as the last truly grand opera in the standard repertoire, Aida. While he was also wonderful in this traditional baritone role, he just blew the audience away as Stephen Kumalo in Lost in the Stars. The Aida production took up on the war theme, which is usually kept offstage in the opera. So there are uniformed soldiers all over the place and a unit set serves well to focus attention on the violence underlying the love triangle between tenor, soprano, and mezzo.
All the voices were fine, as was the conducting by the director of the Cairo Opera. We had earlier heard the Weill conductor, John DeMain, discuss how the production had restored some of Weill's original songs and added a reprise of the title song. Weill remains a fascinating 20th century composer--both for his work in Germany, such as The Threepenny Opera, written with Brecht's lyrics, and then after he fled to the States, his several Broadway shows, plus movie scores and other work. He was a major player in the movement of the 40s and 50s that brought operatic voices into Broadway musicals and created musicals than verged on the operatic. Gershwin really began this effort with Porgy and Bess, and Richard Rodgers built on that, especially with Carousel, as did Weill; the latter two produced great work despite the vast stylistic differences.
Books and lyrics were always the big problem, in my view, and George Gershwin, aided by his superb lyricist, his brother Ira, might have been the luckiest. I find that Oscar Hammerstein's words still seem heavy-handed and I expected little better from Maxwell Anderson's work here for Weill. Anderson was a major American playwright who is just about forgotten today, and surprisingly, he did a nice job with Paton's classic. Weill was well-served on an earlier musical, Lady in the Dark, by securing the services of Ira Gershwin for the first time since George's death.
As out-of-towners hitting two performances on the last day of the festival, we were invited to a picnic with the artistic director and some heavy hitters, that was moved indoors by a sudden shower but which was enjoyable anyway. We sat with a delightful lady who hosts the all-night classical music program on WQXR in New York and had delivered a lecture on Aida's relevance to the current Egyptian political currents.
By the by, should you find yourself in Cooperstown any time soon, and need to dine in what may be the most thriving metropolis in upstate New York, I'd recommend the New York Pizzeria, which is a short ride from the center of town. On the way north, we passed through Richfield Springs on U.S. 20, the old east-west route across New York State. Not only is the breakfast great at the Tally Ho, but there's even a branch of the New York Pizzeria down the street.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
The Phoney War
You can't turn on your TV these days without being deluged by the Super PAC ads and the DNC and RNC ones too. Most are awful but the big money is as always with the GOP as it always has been, since the media was mostly print and it supported the Republicans just as the corporate titans do now. What's in it for them? More of the don't-let-anything-trickle-down stuff we had with Bush Junior.
Our pundits act like Ryan has "new ideas"--none but Paul Krugman will say that they are terrible ideas, that all they will do is transfer even more to those that already have the most, not for their work but for their influence. As the late Jimmy Cannon would put it, it's a game only for suckers. People who believe they will win the lottery so they want to get rid of one of the few tools to even things up--the estate tax. We already give Medicare to the millionaires, who of course don't need it but take every red cent they can put their hands on.
Obama brought some of this on himself by trying to work with people who only want to destroy him and ignoring those who wanted to help him achieve his promise and his promises. But now he's the only game in town--sit it out and you get the worst of the worst. You can see it already in Rove's ads and the Supreme Court majority and Mitch McConnell trying to keep the political arena big bucks spenders from having to disclose what they're shelling out their millions for.
Of course the paid media are far more effective now than Hearst or the Chandlers or Col. McCormick were at their worst. We fall victim to news on the net that focuses of fashion victims rather than real ones. And the big money feeds lies that there's not enough opposition to fight when the "news" shows treat every issue as having two legitimate sides.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Ah, the Olympics
First, the positives about the Olympics. Just getting to see top-class competition in many, many sports that rarely get air time, at least in the U.S., is fantastic, even if you have to find some out-of-the-way cable channel at 3:00 A.M. Second, the Brits managed to rescue that mastodon of TV programming--a show that every four years makes you wish the Oscars show was put on a quadrennial schedule--the opening ceremonies. Now, maybe you didn't find Rowan Atkinson taking out the lead runners in Chariots of Fire or hamming it up while Sir Simon Rattle--only the world's best living conductor--had the London Philharmonic playing the Chariots theme. I, however, was in stitches.
The negatives--which are always many but not very varied--begin with the International Olympic Committee. Remember those wonderful folks who brought you the Nazi Olympics of 1936? To them, that was the crowning moment never yet repeated--and they sure tried, since the next two Olympics--the ill-fated schedules for '40 and '44 were planned for Tokyo and Rome, in case you wondered where their hearts were. And the spirit of Avery Brundage--who learned his trade from seeing his ancestors in 1912 strip Jim Thorpe of his medals for playing a semipro ball game--returned for an encore when the IOC grandly told the Israelis and their ilk to get lost when it came to having a memorial minute for the Munich horrot.
I've often thought that it's amazing that serious competition does indeed occur at the Olympics, amid all the posturing and bad attitudes, but what can you expect from a council made up of quasi-defrocked royalty, old friends of Franco--yes that was Juan Antonio Whateverhisface--and other mostly Euro but also Afro and Asian rich trash?
Oh yes, they banished baseball because ostensibly too few countries played it, despite some of those being ones that don't always get along on other issues, such as Japan, Cuba, and the U.S. Softball went down for the ride, too. And if you're an old champion, don't expect too much respect. Hope Solo gave Brandi Chastain, now a commentator, the back of her hand, just as some German lout did to Jesse Owens in the 60s, and Jesse had only turned up to say something nice.
I watched women's air rifle competition and men's archery and was amazed at how technology now dominates those ancient sports, so that I wonder how, except for politics, they can stay on the schedule. Gymnastics is always amazing--but now the performers, and that's what they are, have actually replaced both vaudeville and Barnum & Bailey in getting and deserving prime time for acrobatic stunts that it would seem no human could pull off. The TV clowns fill that role, too, with the ballyhoo. Costas or Lauer put the Paris Olympics in 1928 (that was Amsterdam) instead of 1924. So much for making use of their potted research.
Take a good look at sports like fencing, though, because in the U.S., many colleges don't have it any more, especially for men, because of Title IX. Yes, it's great that women get equal or even higher billing but yes, too, a lot of it at the college level has come at the expense of men's sports. And I agree with them that the one that costs the most and costs men their other sports--football, American variety--probably should bite the dust on many campuses. The Southeastern Conference should just turn pro.
But the Brits saved the opening ceremonies with a show that made the Chinese and Nazi spectaculars look like the inflated crapola that they were. The Brits were funny--Atkinson, and grandly dramatic--Kenneth Branagh reading from The Tempest, and willing to boast about stuff Americans criticize but would wish they had if they knew what it was about--such as the National Health Service, for all its foibles.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Comedy Strikes Back
A few days in New York (again) allowed me the chance to see a really fine comedy, One Man, Two Guv'nors, which was adapted (and updated) from the Carlo Goldoni 17th century Venetian original and presented on Broadway by a British company put together by the National Theatre. James Corden, who won a Tony this year for his performance, is the lead and he is a true natural clown, and excels (joined by an equally skilled cast) at perfectly-timed slapstick complete with pratfalls aplenty and true and seemingly ersatz audience involvement.
This was one of the absolutely joyous evenings in the theater--which happened to be the delightful Music Box on 45th Street, built by Irving Berlin for his musicals, then jointly owned by the Shuberts and him until the Shuberts' successors bought it from his estate. But I can't overemphasize the sheer delight of this show, which was playing to a packed house the night I took it in. There seemed to be no dead time, either; everything clicks.
Next night found me at the 2nd Stage Theatre on 43rd just west of Eighth Avenue, seeing a new musical called Dogfight, apparently based on a 1991 movie about three new Marines in San Francisco the night before shipping out to Vietnam. The title refers to a bit of Marine ugliness that has each man try to find the ugliest date to win a contest. This time, the lead picks up a nice waitress who finds out what the "party" is all about and calls them out about it. Then the Marine goes back to find her and make amends (no, this isn't a 12-step program).
Doesn't sound like the most likely theme for a musical but the music, lyrics, and especially the choreography are excellent. Joe Mantello, who starred in Angels in America and has become a well-regarded Broadway director, did a fine job putting the best style into action here. The youngish audience hooted and applauded--I'm getting used to this new Broadway behavior, and try to resist recalling (out loud, anyway) that getting audiences to react so formidably was much more daunting a prospect when I first went to see shows--and bravos were few and far between.
Yesterday's Times, however, must have taken some of the wind out of their sails. While praising Mantello's input and the deserving female lead, in particular, the writer pointed out some of the shortcomings in both the plot and the characterization. I felt sorry for the company because they seemed a spirited unit and I think the show could have made it.
Friday, July 6, 2012
A Cornell Friend--Steve Conn
Some readers of this page may have known Steve Conn, an old friend who died this past Tuesday after being in poor health for several years. Steve was a talented journalist and publicist who was both delightful and crazy. Below are some remarks I prepared about his connections with Cornell, from which he graduated seven years prior to my graduation.
Were you to attend a reunion of the Cornell Class of 1960, who graduated 52 years ago, you would likely meet a lot of men wearing buttoned-down white shirts and rep ties and of course sport jackets or even suits. There might even be a few with pocket protectors. The women—and Cornell has always been co-ed—would likely be attired in tasteful suburban outfits. According to their latest class letter, 17 classmates have each contributed more than $1 million to the university.
We commemorate one member of the Cornell Class of 1960 who did not conform to this rather dull profile. When I would run into Steve at annual alumni meetings in New York City—invariably held at one or another of the major hotels managed by Hotel School grads—I’d see him chatting excitedly (did Steve speak in any other way?) with these corporate cut-outs and thought he must be the class member imagined for the class by Damon Runyon. It was as if he’d just wandered in from Broadway or climbed out of the BMT.
Steve graduated from Cornell before I even got there three years later. It was a different place then. Even by the time he graduated, you could still travel there by going to the old Penn Station and jumping aboard the Lehigh Valley’s Black Diamond Express to Ithaca. And for men, until two years after he graduated, two years of ROTC were mandatory. You also had to (and still did when I was there) pass a swimming test to graduate. But some things stayed the same. One was The Cornell Daily Sun, where both Steve and I spent huge amounts of our collegiate lives and where Steve learned a lot of his trade even before he got to Columbia’s J School.
His class recognized that Steve was cut from a different cloth—not just because he was from Brooklyn, heck there were lots of people there from Brooklyn; right, they were the ones with the pocket protectors—but that he was street-smart, had a great gift of gab, and knew how to put some snappy sentences together. They recognized that Steve had skills and knowledge that they couldn’t imagine—to take us back a few decades, they had slide rules and he had the clipboard, the one with a clip, not the one you cut-and-paste with on MS Word.
Steve had the ability to build up enthusiasm by using words but also through his expansive personality. And just as these incredibly dissimilar types appreciated Steve, Steve was fond of his Cornell days and enjoyed hanging with these guys, which always amazed me. I figured he might actually be getting some business from some of them, since they usually appeared to be well-heeled, but then at one of these gatherings, he came over to me and asked me if I knew of a possible job for one of them. Maybe this was Steve’s early ability to network but so much for my thinking that he was the one profiting from it.
Steve was indeed fond of Cornell and when Sam Roberts first worked one summer at the Times, he came back to Cornell full of stories about his high times running around day and night with this wild-man reporter, Steve Conn. Sam, of course, went on to become City Editor of the News and a veteran Times reporter and TV presence. He’s out of the country and wished he could have been at the funeral. Another old friend with whom I attended a Cornell-Princeton football game a few years ago was so mesmerized when we sat with Steve that I thought I’d engineered a fix-up. Without knowing anything about his condition, she asked me a week or two ago out of the blue how he was doing. I doubt that anyone who ever met Steve forgot him.
I thought about Steve and Cornell a week or so ago when I went to a Cornell crab feast on the Eastern Shore. I’ve lived in DC for years and that’s the kind of thing we do. There were lots of people there and the couple on whose huge farm it was held graduated from Cornell the year after Steve did, and looked a lot older than he did even in the bad shape he was in when I saw him last week. But I thought back to the last time I’d been to a Cornell crab feast, which was the one Steve had taken me to back in the mid-70s when I was first living in Washington. As always, he was the life of the party and made sure I met everyone who was anyone, and then a few more, too.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
More Museums--in Philadelphia
Even at the beautiful new building off Ben Franklin Parkway in Center City Philadelphia, a visit to the Barnes collection takes some planning. Eileen and I were in town for a conference of hers on international labor relations so I set up our visit ahead of time; never could it have been arranged upon arrival.
You probably know about the eccentric Dr. Barnes who was in the right place at the right time with the right advice--William Glackens, the American impressionist, purchased some of the best items in the collection. Dr B, of course, had his own ideas about how to hang all the Renoirs, Cezannes, and Matisses on his walls, and said they couldn't be lent or even moved. So finally they were going broke out in his Bala-Cynwd mansion in the Philly suburbs near the Main Line, so they were allowed to build this magnificent set-up and even with his "arrangements" packing paintings on the walls, it's an incredible experience.
Never will you see so much magnificent modern art, plus a few El Grecos and a Durer here and there. But in addition to the masses of Renoirs and Cezannes and Matisses, there are probably 5 or 6 Van Goghs, as many Modiglianis, and some Picassos, Pissaros, Utrillos, Prendergasts, Sisleys, Gauguins, Horace Pippins, and many many more mixed in with American metalwork and Greek sculpture and African masks and sculpture. Yes, it's quite a trip.
Then I picked up where we left off at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco in May at the new National Museum of American Jewish History. It's a well-conceived museum and today I read why they didn't have the actual original G. Washington letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport out--it can only be shown for three months every year. But there were lots of good items and a wonderful film of comedians and Yiddish theater and even the Hollywood moguls. Those last miserable characters got off lightly in the show, which makes me think their descendants must have ponied up for the production. And another one of contemporary edgy stuff had Mel Brooks's most classic Inquisition number from History of the World--Part One and Gilda Radner as Emily Litella discussing saving Soviet jewelry.
I found time to make it out to the Penn Museum of Archaeology which had a pleasant exhibit on Maya 2012, about their calendar which doesn't really say the world will end late this year. Some of the basic parts of the Penn galleries on human evolution and the Etruscans (not those two together) are absolutely fantastic--it seems that Penn had people out in ancient Assyria and Yucatan digging before anyone else got there and they present the stuff brought back very offhandedly in that classically understated Philly style.
Lots of Museums
Every so often I get the chance to make a stab at being up-to-date on what's at some of the many museums worth visiting. Of course, the ones I seem to get to the least are in Washington, which is a shame especially since almost all of those are free, not a standard practice any more in most places. But last week I was in New York and had a rare opportunity to attend a members' preview at the Museum of Modern Art.
The subject was one Alighiero Boetti, whose first name is a variant on Dante's last name. His work is definitely different -- collages of maps made up of flags, lots of early variations on op art. Viewing a whole range of his creations was fun and his life (I believe he died in the 1990s) included a patch running a hotel in Kabul.
Of course, just getting a chance to take in the permanent collection at Moma is delightful. What's even better is that they seem to alter the makeup of that permanent collection by bringing some additions out to take up wall space and these invariably are of the incredible quality of the rest. Another permanent collection always worth a visit is at the Neue Gallerie, the home in New York, on 86th St. and Fifth, of German and Austrian art. This time they were having a Klimt show, and that includes Josef Hoffman designs as well as the occasional Kokoschka or Schiele canvas. Klimt always fascinates me, and Neue has the Adele Bloch-Bauer portrait that the family which owned it fought the Austrian government here and there in court to recover, only to then sell it to Ronald Lauder for the Neue.
The Neue also had a great photo show upstairs featuring Heinrich Kuehne, a colleague of two not-so-shabby camera bugs named Stieglitz and Steichen. Having a coffee downstairs in the lower-level cafe is also a treat. I know, it's not the equal of the first-floor Cafe Sabarsky, which is the perfect rendition of a Vienna coffeehouse, but I don't mind the lesser version. The next day, I took in the Weegee show at the International Center of Photography; Weegee is the ultimate master of the Speed Graphic crime shot, mostly in the 30s and 40s for all New York papers, but a few dead bodies go a long way, although his more experimental work which appeared in PM still is compelling.
Then it was around the corner to the Lunch Hour exhibit at the New York Public Library, not yet ruined by yet another profit-seeking venture envisioned for the grand 42nd Street building. This history of lunch hour in Manhattan featured the coin-slot windows from the old Automat, as well as menus going back to the original Delmonico's in the early 1820s. A fine lady contributed her menu collection in the early 1900s to the Astor Library, one of the three great components of the New York Public. Then there are menus and other items from war-time cafs at the Brooklyn Naval Yard and the great Joe Baum joints of the 50s and 60s--The Four Seasons, The Forum of the Twelve Caesars, Windows on the World. Lots of enjoyable stuff.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
The Next Steps in Ending Prison Rape
[This appeared in the Washington Post on Fri., June 15, 2012]
Now that the Justice Department has promulgated the final standards to try to eliminate prison rape, we need to make
them work. Powerful challenges lie in the realms of perception and practice.
Too many Americans regard the sexual abuse of prisoners as
normal and tolerable. Although strong support is voiced for zero-tolerance
policies, the fact that many people accept the former view is confirmed by the
persistence of prison rape as a subject of humor — online, in film and on
late-night TV talk shows. When productive rehabilitation programs are said to
be “coddling” prisoners, the opposition often stems from the belief that
convicts “deserve what’s coming to them.”
Putting the new standards into effect will require strong
efforts to transmit the endorsement of anti-abuse policies by prison system
leaders — state corrections commissioners, correctional association officers
and unions — to the working-level correctional officers. We know that sexual
abuse in prisons has survived some well-meaning programs to try to end it.
Despite the outstanding efforts of the Bureau of Justice
Statistics (BJS) to quantify how often sexual attacks occur, the data are
incomplete. And given the difficulty in securing honest responses from all
concerned, it is unlikely that we will ever get better numbers. But the data we
have are striking: The Justice Department suggested last month that the abuse
rate could be as
high as 10 percent; BJS surveys of current and former prisoners
reported the rates at 4.4 and 9.6 percent, respectively. All of this discloses
that hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people are subjected to terrible
assaults on human dignity.
Endorsement of the goal by almost all of the nation’s
correctional leaders, who have not always been given credit for adopting
emphatic policies against abuse, has not sufficed. Those engaged in reform of
other parts of the justice system, such as police departments, prosecutors’
offices and courts, know that change at the operating level comes slowly.
Judges and police chiefs issue orders, but it takes persistent training and
constant follow-up to produce measurable improvement in day-to-day behavior.
Calls for more and better training are often derided as
palliative. In this instance, however, because cultural change is needed, far
more training of correctional officers is vital. The National Institute of
Corrections — part of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, itself a unit of the
Justice Department — has led the way in generating and delivering better
training programs.
Revamping the legions of antiquated prisons and jails across
the nation, especially small local jails and lockups, poses another huge
obstacle. The United States went on a prison-building spending spree in the
last quarter of the 20th century. The time has come to pay the piper by
appropriating adequate funds to rebuild older jails and prisons that are not
closing because of the decline in the U.S. jail and
prison populations.
Technology will play only a minimal role in helping prisons
eliminate sexual abuse. Cameras are useful mainly for historical purposes, such
as sometimes documenting incidents. Tracking devices such as electronic
bracelets will eventually become affordable enough to be used to monitor
prisoners and staff.
The greatest impediment to doing away with the culture of
sexual abuse in prisons is actually a belief: that it will be simple to
achieve. Adopting standards makes sense. Supportive statements by the
president, the attorney general, correctional leaders and unions help. But
there can be no substitute for three major steps that go beyond any written
standards: well-conceived, thorough training at all levels; adequately financed
renovation of old prisons and jails that lack effective supervision; and a
broad-based campaign to raise public expectations to meet those of Congress
when it passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act almost a decade ago.
Richard B. Hoffman was executive director of the National
Prison Rape Elimination Commission from 2005 to 2008.
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