One of the most interesting weekends I ever spent was in mid-July 2001, when I flew onto the the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy as a guest of the Carrier Group admiral, Lewis Crenshaw. During the two days I spend on “Big John,” I and the other guests were led up and down and through and all over the ship, which is, as the cliche has it, a floating city, filled with thousands of people doing hundreds of jobs. And, based on my informal observations, about a quarter to a third of them were women — young women, of course, because most people in the military are enlisted and most enlisted people are young. One such young woman said “Excuse me, sir” and I turned around and realized that she was wearing a bathrobe, and was asking to get by me because I was standing between her and the doorway to the women’s bathroom. It was around four in the afternoon, but it was explained to me that because of the different shifts that keep the ship manned — as it were — 24/7, people were getting up and going to sleep, and thus, showering — naked! — at all hours.
So there it was, a floating city, with not a lot of windows, and very few ways off of it, and little privacy, and close quarters — I, a VIP guest, slept on the topmost of three bunks, and shared a private bathroom with six other guys — and you had young men and women everywhere, all of whom, we presume had the same urges that heterosexual people are heir to, and yet, strangely, everybody seemed to be getting along and nobody was creeped out by the fact that another sailor might be checking them out or not checking them out or crushing on them or not. Of course, people aren’t perfect, and female sailors become pregnant from time to time and are removed from the ship to shore duty. I don’t know what, if anything, happens to the happy, expectant fathers.
So everybody seemed to get along, and the ship still floated and launched its planes even though the thing was a veritable floating, enormous steel tank filled with sexual tension. Weird.
Sorry if this post is a bit rambly and undisciplined… I was up late last night finishing up the most juicy pot-boiler it’s been my pleasure to read for a long while: Game Change, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. You’ve heard about it, no doubt, probably mostly about what is quite literally the least interesting thing in it: Harry Reid’s bit of oblivious obviousness.
I see that one of my good friends and others have taken issue with the book… not because anything in it is incorrect (if anyone has shown that any of the facts therein are untrue, rather than being misinterpreted or misreported from the book, let me know) but because it is somehow unseemly. Mr. Pierce is angrily dismissive because the book says little to nothing about health care or the Afghan war or other significant policy issues, to which I reply, well, Moby Dick didn’t have much about bicycles, but it’s still worth reading. And Mr. Bruni tut-tuts because, well, if if political aides keep telling secrets to reporters, well, then, as Nick Lowe so ably put it, “Where are the strong? And who are the trusted?” I mean, if people keep telling reporters what actually happened during campaigns, so the reporters will tell the public, then how can people be expected to run for office?
Look: I, just like everyone I knew, was completely obsessed with the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and not because of the policy implications. (Okay, not entirely about the policy implications. But ask yourself: how many of your dinner table/water cooler conversations were about the prospects of health care reform, and how many were about, say, the Clinton’s marriage? See?) It was a grand drama, played out over months, between fascinating characters… we all talked about what kind of people the candidates were, what they were thinking, feeling, and going to do next. The authors here have provided much much more grist for that mill, and it’s still fascinating, a year or more later. It confirms some things we thought we knew about the candidates — good and bad – contradicts others, ditto, and underlines something that I’ve come to believe more and more: that ultimately, character counts in politics more than specific policy ideas or ideology.
So much for gossip… as for the other argument, that it’s somehow unseemly or unfair for people with knowledge to share that knowledge with journalists, or for journalists to then publish that information… that strikes me as a really strange argument for a journalist to make.
(Disclosure: Mark Halperin was in my college class and he and I had one or two pleasant conversations our freshman year, mostly about college basketball, about which he knew a lot and I knew nothing.)
Last night, on the very evening of my oldest daughter’s 12 birthday, I finished reading the last book in the Harry Potter series out loud to her and her younger sister, aged 9. This is not an uncommon feat — as Nick Kristof once said, “Look, the chance to read these books aloud is by itself a great reason to have kids.” But other than the radio show, reading every word of those seven books aloud — in kid’s bedrooms and hotel rooms and airports and airplanes and inside a tent in the Colorado Rockies one summer — was the single most sustained creative effort I’ve put in over the last few years, so maybe it’s worth some reflection, which begins after the jump.
I’ve always wanted to be in an oppressed minority, if only to feel, for once in my life, nobly and genuinely aggrieved. Sure, I’m Jewish, but it’s been hard to complain about being discriminated against in America for being Jewish ever since the Treaty of Beverly Hills, which granted the entire television industry to us as compensation for Dunkin Donuts making bagels.
A good one for me personally, and for the show, but a lousy one for blogging. Like a lot of people, I ended up putting way more energy into my Twitter feed than keeping up a blog — why say something in 2 paragraphs if 140 characters will do? — and while I can’t promise to do better in the new decade, I do thank all of you who keep me bookmarked or on your RSS feed for keeping the faith. Me = Godot, almost.
And, As I’ve been saying to my colleagues, this may have been the best year ever for Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. There were a lot of specific highlights — our show at Carnegie Hall high among them — but mostly, it had a lot to do with the addition of two new staff members, Ian Chillag and Eva Wolchover. Along with Mike Danforth, our Senior Producer, and producer Emily Ecton, we had as much fun behind the scenes as, hopefully, you all do listening in, and I think it really showed.
I am always mindful of the fact that, like Tinkerbell (a character conceived of by a playwright, I note) we don’t exist without your applause. If people didn’t listen, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy ourselves so much making noise. So let me end the year — from an undisclosed, paradisaical location – by saying, thank you, thank you, to each and every one of you, and we’ll try to do it again for you next year, as long as you keep allowing us.
On Saturday morning, I had the honor of moderating a Colbert Report discussion panel, part of the extraordinary Second City 50th Anniversary celebration. All of the folk you see above: writers Peter Grosz and Peter Gwinn, former exec producer Alison Silverman, co-exec producer Tom Purcell and Stephen Colbert himself, are all alumni of the Second City’s performing troupes, touring groups, training center, and in Colbert’s case, the merchandise table. (He said that for a long time, he held the record for most T-shirts sold in one night.) Read the rest of this entry »
I tweeted a very brief negative review (”Shpathetic”) of Cirque Du Soleil’s new show at the Chicago Theater, “Banana Shpeel,” and I feel obligated to expand more… besides, since I can’t get my money back, maybe I can keep you from wasting yours.
First, the obligatory Recitation of Credentials (all of the hate mail we get at WWDTM starts this way, too): I love me some Cirque Du Soleil. I saw their second touring tent show on a beach in Santa Monica in 1988, and have since then seen — let me see — four of their permanent shows in Vegas, one in Disney World, another touring edition, and a few more on videotape. I celebrated my birthday last year by taking the whole family to see “Alegria,” and we walked out humming the trapeze act. And, in fact, the four true circus acts in this show (two jugglers, two gymnast/strength acts) are up to the usual Cirque standards.
… but the rest of the show just sucked. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune had a very interesting piece exploring the commercial rationale for the show: they want something they can tour to the large proscenium rental houses that are available in each major city (many of them, like the Pasadena Civic or the Wang in Boston are places where WWDTM now plays, so I know them well.) He also wrote about the creative turmoil… apparently, it was planned as a real musical, with book and actors, but that wasn’t working out and they cut the songs and fired the actors. They should have scrapped the whole thing and started again.
The show was “written” and directed by David Shiner, a very talented new vaudevillian who I saw years ago on Broadway in a double bill with Bill Irwin, called “Fool Moon,” Shiner, silent but otherwise un-clownlike in dress or demeanor, specialized in audience participation… he’d bring somebody up on stage, then somebody else, and somehow manage to coerce and cajole them into doing rather amazingly funny things. His demeanor, as I remember it, was mischievous, sometimes a little scary — but never cruel.
That cruelty is all that he’s got to offer here. The “framing device,” such as it is, is auditions for a producer’s new show. Two speaking clowns, whose schtick is that they hate each other, introduce the acts — more clowns, whom the first clowns hate, and who hate them in return. There were some fleeting moments of humor — the “World’s Oldest Mime” got some laughs — but by the long clown set-piece with an audience “volunteer” at the end of the first act (strange, the production photos feature the same “audience member” we saw) made my wife and myself stare downwards, hoping for it to be over. Can’t remember the last time I felt that at the circus.
I am usually quiet about the bad theater I see; I have committed enough myself (and probably still do, some weeks) to know that those who make it are trying their best and don’t need somebody else out there on the internets trashing their work. But Cirque du Soleil is smart enough, and successful enough, that they should have known better than to foist this one on the public. Whatever they would have lost, financially, in canceling the engagement is less than the blow I think their reputation will take when more Cirque-lovers like me walk out of the theater, actually angry…
A while ago, I did something I had never done before, and wasn’t sure I should… I used this platform, and my Twitter feed, to solicit funds for a dear friend who was in serious medical trouble. Her name is Jo Carson, and you can read more about her here and here.Between your generosity, and that of her friends and colleagues in the theater, we’ve raised almost $25,000 to help pay for her treatment and care. I am extraordinarily grateful to all of you. Jo’s been sending out semi-regular emails to update her friends on her status — improving, thank goodness — and so I asked her if I could post one here… or maybe she’d like to write something just for you. Here is her response. You’ll get a sense, I hope, of just what kind a person and writer she is, and why she is so important to me. Her needs continue, so if you’re moved to help, or help some more, please click here.
So Peter, you want an update in this ongoing re-forging of my mettle…
I think a lot these days about what this brush with the grim reaper really is. I don’t think I’m being melodramatic, people do die of cancer, and both my grandparents Carson died of this sort of cancer (so I probably have some genetic inheritance at work in my colon). They died before there was much to do about cancer beyond surgery. Grandpa had surgery; Grandma opted out of it, but she was really sick by the time she was diagnosed. I remember both their deaths; they were both long and rather painful, and the surgery probably gave Grandpa a few more months to be in pain.
My options are different: the cancer in my colon had not metastasized when we found it; chemo and radiation usually work (they have already mightily shrunk this cancer); and with the upcoming surgery, my chances of cancer free survival are very good.
Another day, another 26.2 miles. The New York Marathon was everything everybody said it would be — exciting, enormous, equal to the hype. Running over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge is a hell of a way to start anything, and running up and over the Queensboro Bridge felt like slowly flying into Manhattan, with the huge crowd noise a cloud to land on. Read the rest of this entry »
