A much more enjoyable take on god

I was brought up in a Catholic household in the 50s and attended St. Bridget's elementary school from third through sixth grades. The nuns taught me everything I've ever needed to know about grammar and did a pretty good job of teaching me a lot of other things -- including the remarkable observation that when I misbehaved in class the thorns dug a little deeper into the baby Jesus's head! WTF?! Since when did the baby Jesus wear a crown of thorns?

I remember too the day when one of the kids put a thumbtack on another kid's seat. He screamed, we laughed, Sister Never-Smile chided us: "Go ahead and laugh, but let me tell you about poor little Johnny in my previous school. Someone put a tack on his seat and those students laughed too but then the wound became infected and nobody laughed when THEY HAD TO AMPUTATE HIS LEG!"

Jesus, Sister, terrorize children much?!

One thing I didn't learn from the nuns was the bible. Catholics back then were told not to read the bible. It was too difficult and too confusing. Father Never-Met-An-Altarboy-He-Didn't-Like would tell us what we needed to know. So it was that I never read much of the bible until my late fifties when I was briefly a member of the Episcopal church and a house group that met weekly to read and discuss the world's most popular book. I learned enough about "God" during those sessions to give up my faith completely.

Yesterday I attended a performance of The Mysteries, a spectacular theatrical event that tells the story from Adam and Eve to Paul -- everything you ever wanted to know about the bible while laughing your ass off. It was hysterically written, incredibly staged, beautifully acted, terrifically sung and amazingly choreographed in an area the size of two parking spaces.

Seriously. I've tried to give you an idea of the space. Each x is a seat; there were between 65-70 of them, that's all. The dark blue area is where the action was staged. Behind the second row of seats was a passageway where cast members often stood, or sang, or played instruments.The cast is 48. Forty-eight! It was a tight fit but never for a second felt uncomfortable.

Not even during the intermission, when we served dinner at our seats. Served. At our seats. Dinner. Incredible, and as far from any concept of dinner theatre you've ever before had in your head. At the second intermission we were served dessert.

And did I mention that the show is five and-a-half hours long? Well, if I didn't, that's probably because it felt half that length; it flew by.

And may I tell you that three hot men get naked? Well, bonuses galore.

When I see a show like this -- has there ever been a show like this -- and think of what the Topeka tourist sees when she comes for a "theatre" weekend in New York, I cringe. At the chandeliers. At the stuffed-animal actors. At the ear-splittingly loud scores. At the technical wizardry. For an antidote to all that wham-bam-dazzle-you-ma'am we are lucky to have The Flea in Tribeca, presenting one of the most original theatrical experiences you will ever come across. It runs til July 14. Get your butt to New York!

Hats off to HBO

In the mid 70s I was a member of the Gay Alliance of Students; we had to sue Virginia Commonwealth University to win the right to exist and to use a classroom for our meetings. Forty years later the country is on the road to recognizing marriage as a civil right for all people, in all states. It's been a breathtaking ride.

HBO tells the story of the landmark court case that brought down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and sent California's hateful and homophobic Proposition 8 to the trash heap of history in an uneven but powerful documentary, The Case Against 8. It's a bit too dry and not as gripping as it deserves to be, but I was nonetheless moved by the courage of the plaintiffs and sat in wonder at how much things have changed since my day in court.

Kris Perry, one of the plaintiffs in the Case Against 8, and one of her sons

Two days later I watched another HBO presentation, Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, about the early days of the AIDS epidemic. This one is not dry. Neither were my eyes. It's powerful stuff and the lead character, Ned Weeks (Larry Kramer in fact) is convincingly played by Mark Ruffalo, an actor whose work I have long enjoyed.

The most sobering moment of The Normal Heart comes at the end when a slide tells us that 35 million people worldwide have died from this plague. 35 MILLION PEOPLE! The mind cannot grasp the enormity of that. In America we lost a generation of young men but eventually turned AIDS into a manageable chronic health problem -- at least for those lucky enough to have good health insurance. The rest of the world, especially the African continent, has not been so lucky.

In the US, AIDS has been somewhat tamed and homophobes have been chastised. It's politically correct to support gay marriage and, in the greater New York area at least, being gay ceased to be an issue for many of us quite some time ago.

But hatred and stupidity are alive and thriving in other parts of the country, and the world. Watching The Case Against 8 and The Normal Heart is an important reminder of that fact.

Zealotry 1, Culture 0

Achille Lauro. Like Titanic, Lusitania and Normandie it is a ship that lives in infamy. While only one person died, he died famously and cruelly, murdered in his wheelchair and then tossed overboard. His name was Leon Klinghoffer.

Famed composer John Adams wrote The Death of Klinghoffer, an opera that premiered in 1991 at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I was there. It was an exciting and important evening, though I cannot say I loved all I heard. There were sublime moments, mostly choral, and it was convincingly staged, but it's an opera that rightfully never really entered the modern repertory.

Still, I was happy to hear that the Metropolitan Opera was finally going to present Klinghoffer next season. Better still, it was to be included in the Live in HD series, so I could revisit it without going into the city. Free versus $25 in transportation expense and a $100 ticket? Deal!

Alas, no deal. The HD schedule was written without consulting the world's Jewish leaders. Once they got word, everything changed. Met Executive Director Peter Gelb announced this week that he was bowing to "unimaginable" pressure to not show Klinghoffer in theaters around the world, less someone's anti-Semitism is somehow stoked. Gelb says the work is NOT anti-Semitic, but caved nonetheless.

I am sick to death of religious leaders and their followers trying to tell us what to see, what to think and how to behave. Believe in whatever fantasies you wish, say I; just keep your prejudices and hatreds to yourself.

I wrote the other day about the troubles in Iraq. It's all about religion. Are you Sunni or Shia? If you're one you must hate the other. Bullshit. In Klingoffer it's Palestinians and Israelis. John Adams wrote a serious opera with compassion toward both sides of the divide. No serious critic thinks it is anti-Semitic or pro-terror. But a bunch of powerful Jews want it stopped, so stopped it is.

This is just further evidence of the intolerance we Americans have grown for anything that we don't agree with, for anything that might challenge us. I for one am sick of it. Live and fucking let live, dammit!
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Addenda:

My friend Don points out that the real foul here is with Peter Gelb and the Met backing down. I wholeheartedly agree and could have been clearer in emphasizing that point.

On a totally unrelated note, it is ironic that days after I saw Gerry Goffin portrayed in the Broadway show Beautiful he should pass away yesterday at 75. I mourn his loss and celebrate his brilliance. 

The Soundtrack of My Life

Regular readers of this blog -- or at least those with a memory -- may recall that I have loved the Graham Nash album Songs for Beginners since its release in 1971. I mentioned in an earlier post that in September of that year I drove from New York to Virginia, listening to it over and over, numb and tearful as Nash sang "When your love has moved away, you must face yourself and you must say, I remember Better Days."

I still play Songs for Beginners regularly, but there's another album from 1971 that is also special, this time not just to me but to millions of fans. It was a phenomenon, staying on the Billboard charts longer than any album before it, spawning several hit records and countless cover versions. In 1971 and 1972 I don't think I was ever at a party where it wasn't played.

With songs like You've Got a Friend, It's Too Late, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, I'm of course talking about Carole King's iconic second album, Tapestry. It was a treasure back then and it still is today.

Legions of new fans are learning of King's way with words via the Broadway show Beautiful, the Carole King Musical. I saw it last night.

I had avoided it at first, partly because of how much I love Tapestry. I thought, "I know that album inside out; I love that album; I don't want to take a chance with a commercial retread." As time passed though I read more and more about the show and its star, Jesse Mueller, and started to think I should go. Then I saw the footage of Carole King finally coming to see the show and I knew I had to go. I bought a ticket and then watched the Tonys; I was thrilled when Mueller won and loved her performance on the show.

And last night did not disappoint. Jesse Mueller is the real deal; she plays the piano beautifully, sings with strength and emotion and practically channels Carole King. Beautiful is far from a one-woman show though; there's lots of talent on stage and there's a compelling story to be told. King's marriage to Gerry Goffin and their friendly competition with songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil form the show's nexus, while sixties pop/rock provides the sonic accoutrements that make the show cook.

I don't think I've ever seen a new show where I knew every word to every song, but that was my experience last night. Every word. Every song. It truly was the soundtrack of my life.

I decided before the show started that One Fine Day was going to be the test. Remind yourself of what a kick-ass, perfect pop song that is by listening here. If Beautiful could put that song over then they'd have me.

Did they?

Well, yes; well, no. It is a high energy, perfectly acceptable version, well sung by Rashidra Scott -- but it lacks the punch of the Chiffons' version with its unbelievable driving piano -- until, that is, Jesse Mueller picks it up and drives home the truth of the lyrics, straight from her heart. It's a killer Broadway moment.

Another great moment, and a total surprise, was We Gotta Get Out of This Place. I had no idea this Animals rocker was written by Weil and Mann. Other great songs in the show include Up on the Roof, On Broadway, The Locomotion, Take Good Care of My Baby, Pleasant Valley Sunday and You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling. Those songs alone are enough to make you love this show; add to it the Carole King classics from Tapestry (So Far Away, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, It's Too Late, You've Got a Friend, Natural Woman, Beautiful and I Feel the Earth Move) -- and you've got over two hours of rock history energetically presented in this much-more-than-a jukebox musical.

Go!

Apparently for naught

As I read and hear about the chaos in Iraq I am taken back to April 30, 1975, the day that Saigon fell to the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong). Those of us who protested against the Vietnam War knew that day would eventually come; we may not have known which side would win, but we knew that Vietnam's troubles were internal and that the mighty US of A had no business meddling in them.

Our government learned next to nothing from that debacle. Twenty-eight years later we invaded Iraq, toppled the government and tried to install our version of order on a country that was torn apart by sectarian divisions. Just as we failed in Vietnam, so it is now clear we have failed in Iraq.

And for the slow learners in Washington, it will soon be clear how terribly we have failed in Afghanistan.

When will we learn that we have no right to attack other countries because we don't like the way they do things?

Answer: probably never. I think it is in our psyche to believe that we have all the answers and all the power. The nineteenth century doctrine of Manifest Destiny proclaimed we were special and we had the right, and the duty, to rule over half of the North American continent. We've never renounced that idea but have in fact amplified it. With the end of the Cold War we stood proudly as the one superpower on earth and reacted with indignation to the idea that we could possibly be wrong in any of our actions.

This attitude dovetails perfectly with the frontiersman attitude that gun owners exhibit and goes a long way toward explaining why even the deaths of twenty six-year olds in Newtown, CT, did not force a change in our idiotic and unique attitude towards guns. We are the world's cowboys and we will do whatever the fuck we want, children and innocent victims be damned.

The title of this post comes from a sentence in today's New York Times editorial, Iraq in Peril. "After disbanding Saddam Hussein's army in 2003 after the invasion by coalition forces and dismantling the government, the United States spent years and many billions of dollars building a new Iraqi Army, apparently for naught."

Apparently?

Predictably!

The Tonys

I hadn't planned to write about the Tonys. As I told a friend, better-connected, more knowledgable people than I have already flooded the cyberwaves with erudite punditry. But a piece in yesterday's Times caught my eye and prompts me to have my say.

In Tony Awards Face Criticism Over ‘In Memoriam’ Segment on June 10, Patrick Healy writes about the omission of the people-who-died (thank you, Jim Carroll) segment from the broadcast. It was run during a commercial break so we TV viewers didn't see it.

“Presenting in this manner allowed us to include more individuals than we have been able to include most years, and as a result, more accurately reflected the depth of loss suffered by our community this past year,” Shawn Purdy, a spokeswoman for Tony Award Productions, said in an email. This year’s montage was about two minutes and 40 seconds long, the same length as Cyndi Lauper’s last year.

I LOVE that paragraph. We get the bullshit explanation from a Tony spokesman and then in nineteen quick words the Times points out the lie.

The In Memoriam segment was dropped to make room for advertisements, of that I am sure. Worse, they weren't advertisements admitting to be advertisements -- they were adverts pretending to be entertainment: Sting plugging The Last Ship (coming to Broadway in October); The Paramount Group, owners of the Gershwin Theatre, promoting their longtime tenant Wicked; and, worst of all, "Jennifer Hudson singing a song from Finding Neverland even though she isn’t in the musical – and the musical isn’t even on Broadway.” (Note: it's opening soon at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA, with no definite plans to come to New York).

I am so sick of advertisements and the money-grubbing culture that propels them. With TiVo's help I managed to avoid every single moment of the traditional commercials during the Tony broadcast, but I was suckered into watching the three in-show hypes. But you know what? I represent the backlash. I am now less inclined to see The Last Ship, Neverland or Wicked.

Take that, you pushy producers.

As for the awards, I was thrilled, and surprised, that A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder won for Best Musical. It is a fantastic show, but with no mega stars or spectacle, I didn't think it would win. I was also extremely happy that Neil Patrick Harris and Hedwig both won -- I see it in August -- and touched that Jesse Mueller won for Beautiful -- seeing it next week. And The Glass Menagerie finally won a Tony -- admittedly, a minor one, Best Lighting Design -- its first in seven Broadway incarnations. How is that possible?!

And the best-named winner of a 2014 Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre? No question: Beowulf Boritt, for scenic design of the play Act One.

There's no place like home

It's true, it really is. Sometimes for the littlest reasons, like having my green tea in the morning -- Celebrity Cruises, inexplicably, stopped carrying green tea. And sleeping in my own bed is a huge plus, even if I have to make it myself. Even doing laundry felt familiar and comfortable (don't tell Ransom).

The biggest plus though is, of course, family, and we are now all together. I picked up Cassie, Zeus and Zack this morning and so all is right with the world. Poor Zack: he experienced his first kennel stay -- a long one at seventeen days -- and then on Thursday we're gonna cut his balls off. He'll be surely wondering what the hell's happening to his world.

Picking up the dogs was easy (Cassie, left; Zeus, below; Zack at the bottom); picking up the mail, not so much. File this in the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished drawer: on the Hold Mail card I ticked A: I will pick up the mail upon my return, not B: Please deliver held mail to me when I return. I thought it would be the nice thing to do, to go get the large amount of mail -- mostly junk no doubt -- that accumulates over two and-a-half weeks, rather than make our poor carrier bring it to us. The Hold Mail card is addressed to my Post Office, here in Woodbridge; but the pick-up spot is at the main post office in New Haven. Doesn't say that on the card. Doesn't say you will need to drive an additional 25 minutes and wait in a very long line at a very crowded branch in another town. Funny, that.

Still, it's good to be home, petty irritations and all. We caught up on Nurse Jackie, watching all three episodes TiVo had saved for us, and in the morning I had a simple bowl of cereal, without the side of sausage, pancakes, croissants, pain aux chocolat, scrambled eggs or smoked salmon that I night have had on the ship.

One final thought: air travel is still a bit weird. Even after flying for decades, I still find it a tad odd to have breakfast in Barcelona and lunch in Connecticut. Both meals were fine and the flight, with three movies and a Wanda Sykes video, was perfectly comfortable. It's just weird to travel that far that fast.

Call me Phineas Fogg.

Notes to Self

We were off the ship by 8:45 yesterday, through the taxi line in perhaps fifteen minutes and at our hotel in Barcelona by 9:30. It was of course too early to get in our room so we left our bags and went walking through this beautiful city with its wide tree-lined boulevards. After a stop for a coffee we made it to La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's massive, fanciful, bizarre and wonderful church in the heart of town. I knew the church was still under construction but I wasn't prepared for how much construction was going on, and in how many places. The building was begun in 1882; it's not clear to me when it will ever be finished.

The outside is whimsical and jaw-dropping; see pictures below. The inside is magnificent and -- oh wait, I can't talk about the inside -- we couldn't get in. They were selling tickets for the next day; yesterday's were all booked!

Note to self: research even things that don't seem to need research, like, entry to a church.

We took the Metro to Las Ramblas and spent a tiring but entertaining hour people-watching while walking down this packed promenade. After a tapas lunch we made our way back to the hotel and collapsed. After a bit of a rest we did our email thing -- blessed free WiFi! -- and then had lovely paella at a beautiful restaurant just around the corner.

Note to self: start eating sensibly today!

I'm glad we had a few hours in this cosmopolitan and charming city, but, in truth, it probably would have made more sense to fly home yesterday and save Barcelona for another trip

Note to self: I don't have to do it all, all at once.

Soon we're off to the airport and the flight to Kennedy.