theater

Wednesday various

Wobegoned

Today — okay, technically yesterday, though I’m time-stamping this — was another clean-up day at the office. I didn’t finish boxing up all the old files I wanted to, but I did throw away a big box of floppy disks and CDs, which at one point contained important manuscript files and are nothing much more than landfill or coasters. There were also a couple of zip disks in there, which I remember at one point being the thing for file storage — my old boss at Penn State loved them — but which I realized I hadn’t actually seen in use for a long, long time. I was amused to discover, then, via Wikipedia that they are still used…”by retro computing enthusiasts.” They went in the trash. Or recycling. Honestly, I handed off the box to our mail room guy and de facto office manager, and I’m not really sure what he did with them.

But they’re out of my hands, no longer collecting dust under the second chair in my cubicle, and nothing I have to bring with me when we move offices in the spring.

After work, I met up with my parents for dinner, and then a live performance of A Prairie Home Companion. It was a lot of fun, if maybe a little shaggy around the edges. (Friday night is the dress rehearsal for the Saturday radio broadcast.) There was a lot of great music, and some really nice poetry, though at this point I may be a little Home Companion‘ed-out, having seen another simulcast of the show just back in October.

Then again, I think I enjoyed the evening a lot more than the couple in front of me, who I think were most amused by the fact that one of the guest musicians, a really talented jazz pianist, was named Dick Hyman. See — even frat boys can find something to giggle about on public radio!

Thursday various

  • Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but is “it’s on like Donkey Kong” actually such a popular phrase? I’m going to try to popularize the phrase “This is gonna hurt like Q*bert!”
  • I didn’t love what I saw of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and it seemed a little like a well-intentioned but disjointed mess. But I’m perfectly willing to accept Jon Stewart’s argument (expressed in this long and compelling interview with Rachel Maddow) that those intentions were entirely apolitical on their part. That they were just trying to put on a comedy show, and whatever “message” the rally had, it was not the same message that so many of his viewers, so many of the left-leaning progressives who attended the rally and are bemoaning its outcome, clearly wanted it to be. I’m perfectly willing to let Stewart pass for falling short of what I hoped the rally would be — a call to arms, groundbreaking satire, something, anything other than a singalong with Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow. I’m willing to let Stewart pass on this, the same way I’m not willing to let Obama pass for falling short on his own call to arms, because when you get right down to it, I buy Stewart’s contention that he’s just a comedian. A comedian with a political bent and sometimes important insight, but one following in pretty well-established treads and with pretty well-established boundaries. It can seem like a cop-out, and I think Stewart acknowledges that, but I think he also does a good job of explaining why it’s not, why his job isn’t drumming up progressive activism (on the left or right) but instead making people laugh.

    I think you can argue that the rally wasn’t entirely successful on that front either, but I think it’s important to weigh expectations against intentions.

  • On a less serious note, Harry Potter as space opera [via]
  • Uwe Boll: he just might make you root for the Nazis.
  • And finally, building the perfect zombie safe house.

A day in the theatre

I spent most of the afternoon in Manhattan, joining my parents for a Broadway matinee and dinner out to celebrate their anniversary. We went to see A Life in the Theatre, which, despite the opportunity to see Patrick Stewart on stage, I really can’t at all recommend. I thought both he and T.R. Knight did the best they could with some very thin material, but I have to agree with Ben Brantley’s take on it:

At least as damaging is our impression that the relationship between the two men doesn’t evolve. A counterpoint between the irritable wistfulness of Robert — eager to impart his skill to his younger confrère — and the impatient heedlessness of John is established in the beginning, and any variation on that dichotomy is sparse. And in the scenes that find the actors in costume, in plays, they are as cartoonish as figures from Broadway satires in old television variety shows.

The show is kind of atypical of David Mamet, although there are a couple of c-words tossed in near the beginning, unfortunately, just to remind you whose play you’re watching.

And would somebody tell me, when did standing ovations become something audiences did at the end of shows just as a matter of course, regardless of the show?

Then we had dinner at Keens Steakhouse, which was okay.

Now I’m home and watching episodes of Fringe — seriously, when did this show get good? — and trying to finish the Sunday crossword puzzle. I think I’m going to be more successful at the former than the latter.