Getting four bars of Galaxy chocolate sent to you as a surprise from England.
You rule, Weegoddess!
Nom nom nom nom.....
Growing up in Maryland, we had crabs. We had Ocean City, we had bragging rights to Washington D.C., and we had crabs. What I was too young to realize was that we also had John Waters.
Until I saw "Hairspray" (the movie) in the theaters, with mom. She hadn't grown up in Baltimore, but she loved musicals and so did I and we just swooned over "Hairspray." Somewhere, Waters was snickering.
In the years since, the rise of the king of disgusting films Waters has probably been doing a lot of that, as our basic culture has lowered to his expectations, while simultaneously he's gone more legit (no more feces-eating in his films, thankyouverymuch). And nothing is more legit than Broadway, or a Broadway musical. I didn't care all that much for "Hairspray" on Broadway (although the rest of the world did) and I've never had the urge to see the second "Hairspray" musical. But once I heard a friend of mine (Adam Schlesinger, the genius in Fountains of Wayne and Ivy, among other things) was part of the musical team for "Cry-Baby" on Broadway -- another Waters film -- I was definitely charged up to go.
And last night was the Broadway debut. Waters was of course in fine form, striding in with a blue blazer lined in white and camouflage pants; he wasn't mobbed but he was certainly the center of a lot of attention. The show itself was about 60% entertaining. It's got some fun lines and one amazing dance routine where Cry-Baby is in jail and breaks out, and in the process everyone ends up tap-dancing on license plates (seriously, it works) but I'm not sure about the rest of it. Poking fun at the '50s feels ... dare I say it, dated.
"I think it celebrates old-fashioned juvenile delinquency, which is a term that no one uses anymore because juvenile delinquents now kill people," Waters told the San Francisco Chronicle, and that is what makes it fun -- but there's something rather ho-hum once you know how he defines crass. You get pregnant juvenile delinquents dancing up a storm, an anti-polio picnic, elaborately choreographed make-out sessions and a lot of wink-wink behavior. I know this isn't his film, and it gets away from the film in a lot of ways but ... there's nothing shocking here. And that may be the most bizarre part about the show.
However.
The party afterwards, held at Mansion downtown -- that was incredible! I ran into some industry friends (a lawyer, his co-worker and an aspiring actress) at the coat check, and as we headed into the main area we were handed large brown shopping bags and told to go pick up stuff. But before we did that, libations were in order. I'd put in an order for a boring vodka-Coke, then saw one of the special drinks of the night was absinthe poured over a sugar cube. Nobody else in our group was willing to sample, so what the hell, and I ordered it. The bartender turned on a tap from a raised vat filled with a watery liquid and ice cubes and let it dribble over a suspended sugar cube balanced on a glass. Classy.
"Kinda nice that you can get this stuff now, since it used to be illegal," I noted. They were actually paying attention, so you know I had to go there: "After all, you know what they say about absinthe ... it makes the heart grow fonder."
And then they kicked my ass to the curb.
Actually, no: the lawyer said that was just exactly his type of humor and I survived another very bad attack of punning. The drink arrived. Kind of, um, dull: Only about 1/3 of the glass was filled with what looked like water , with a small mountain of sugar piled on the bottom. But what the hell, I tried it. Vaguely licoricey, but no kick. I passed it around. We all shrugged. I figured I'd end up on the floor later if this stuff had a delayed reaction, and off we went to do some grown-up trick or treating.
The main level had a dance floor, and hired dancers in 50s-dress were doing the Lindy and all kinds of fantastic moves; trannies and cross-dressers wandered the room in full regalia, and stations of goodies drew us forward to filil our bags. There was a kissing booth around which mounds of Altoids gum canisters were arrayed; we picked some up but no smooching went down. Further along, a makeup stand handed out some high-end "makeup couture," while cigarette girls bumped into us, offering candy smokes.
Upstairs we got our pictures taken at the "prom" by standing behind cardboard cutouts (and I got a paper "corsage"), we visited a "doctor" and his "nurses" who asked where it hurt (I poked at my elbow) and got a bag of candy (Neccos, Clark Bars, Smarties) to ease the pain. We were escorted out of the badly-protected VIP area and briefly met one of the big cheese Nederlander clan of Broadway theater owners/producers. We stopped by a table where we approached one of three primly-dressed 50s ladies who asked us questions in return for goodies.
"What did they make in the prison?"
"License plates."
"Correct! But how do you know so much about what goes on in jail?"
"Don't tell anyone!"
"I have no secrets from the LAWD."
But she reached down and gave me a box of butterscotch Tastykakes for my trouble.
Hello! HEAVEN.
We headed back to the dance floor, which had quickly filled up, and tried to get new drinks. I'd finished my "absinthe" but, well, there was something absent in the absinthe, so we bellied up and ordered more. This time, they did it right: The alcohol went in first, then the vat of ice water over the cube. Duh. Apparently I'd had a virgin absinthe, aka sugar water, last time. And this stuff definitely had a kick. The lawyer also got one; later the co-worker got an absinthe mojito. So we were all well and pleasantly toasted as we headed to the dance floor.
Now, I don't dance well, but I love to do it. And most people I dance with either can't, or don't like to, or are just all bashful, so I don't get much opportunity. Turns out our lawyer friend knows how to dance, at least far better than I do, so I actually got to twirl and do a few funny moves while the 50s classics moved into 60s classics and John Waters took Kathleen Turner (aka Serial Mom) out for a spin. After a James Brown song we collapsed into the sofa seats and played "Name that Band" and added lyrics to "Mony Mony" when it came on. But slowly the songs segued into "Hollaback Girl" and worse (I do like HBG, though) and it became far too loud to talk, and that's the sign to go.
We redeemed our raffle ticket at the Taste truck outside for a selection of cookies and Rice Krispie treats and got a cab. I think I finally crashed out at home around 2. Now, that's a party.
Moral of the story: None. But if you're going dancing with John Waters and drink absinthe and get home past the witching hour, try not to do it on a weeknight. Oy!
First a little housekeeping:
Next: What "Well Told Tales" loved, "Alfred Hitchcock Magazine" was less than charmed by. I got a form rejection letter today (thanks, but doesn't fit our needs, etc.). But the rejection is tempered: Some nice editor wrote a note at the bottom, saying, "I really enjoyed 'Home for the Holidays' and look forward to another funny story from you." There's a signature, but this guy was clearly a doctor in a previous life because it's illegible.
What's funny about being considered funny is that the story isn't really written for guffaws; it's dark humor at best. But, whatever, I'll take what I can. I recently read advice that following a rejection the thing you do immediately is ship the story out elsewhere, so "Ellery Queen," stand back!
And at last: Right, so Passover in Pflugerville and Round Rock, the two small suburbs outside of Austin that draw me nigh for major holidays. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, or maybe it's just useless to swim against the tide all the time, but other than the long journey down there, I'm not minding visiting East Texas so much any more. I kind of have a curiosity about the place, and want to see some of the smaller towns. Maybe even watch a real tumbleweed go by if possible.
Well, I got some of that this visit. It was just a three-day thing, so Mom and I headed out to Greuneon Saturday for their once-a-month outdoor marketplace.
But it was a lovely warm day and we found a secret parking spot that was probably not fully allowed but nobody ticketed us, we got chips and cheese at the local Mexican joint and made plans to come back another day because we had to leave early enough to be home for Passover.
Now, Passover is many things and we all ate some amazing food and read the Haggadah and tried to restrain a 1-year old while keeping a 4-year old interested in the proceedings (both succeeded in limited ways). My brother makes a kick-ass matzo ball soup, and he even bought me a great big slab of fish for my portion (since I don't eat the brisket). You can't say they don't make you feel at home. We even got Nat the baby to speak briefly: Syd started making up knock-knock jokes ("Knock-knock!" "Who's there?" "Table!" "Table who?" (long pause) "Table with the salt on it! Bwah-ha!") and suddenly Nat said, "Knock knock." Amazing.
They are, however, raising a complete hellion risk-taking giggle-puss. Craig asked if I wanted to come with him and Sydney to get the mail. On their golf cart. I've talked about the fact that he has a golf cart to get the mail before, but little did I realize that the journey to the actual mailbox was, shall we say, circuitous. I dare you to watch this video and hear my niece laugh even as she heads into the "deep, dark forest" and not feel a little bit joyous yourself. Please to enjoy, but please don't tell her mother.
Craig tolerantly followed us around as we pointed at Clydesdales (not usually a sea creature, but Busch owns the park), Beluga whales, dolphins, alligators, and Shamu himself.
So we went on it.
Three times.
I kid you not. As soon as we got off, she'd say "again!" and then not even flinch when we said we'd have to wait in line again. (Admittedly, the lines weren't long, but what 4-year old has patience?)
Then, Craig did the thing everybody wants their father to do whenever they theme park that sells gigantic prizes.
He won her a giant Shamu.
(The gray one she's holding in the picture is a dolphin she won herself, she never let go of it the whole time -- except on the Shamu rollercoaster -- but there's just no comparison: Shamu totally blew everything else away.) Craig humped it (I know there's a humpback whale joke in there somewhere) all over the park, even setting it down for the actual Shamu show in one of the bleacher seats.
And really, while I've got all of this shpilkis over is this humane to make animals perform for us, watching the great Orcas do their shit completely blew my mind. You can't help but envy their trainers, who get to ride on them or with them or on their noses, and when the whales flop themselves into the air or onto the platforms you can't help but get excited, too.
Personally, I had little tears in my eyes because they're just so beautiful.
No wonder we had a sleepy young lady who conked out on the way home. Oh, and Sydney took a nap too.
One final note: We did have to make a pit stop on the way home. And while there, I noticed how we'd pulled into a gas station that had this classic BBQ locale parked right next door:
Now, that's Texas, right there for you.
Never even saw Austin. In three days I hit: Pflugerville, Gruene (pronounced "Green" but you know we had fun calling it "Groin"), Round Rock, and Sea World.
My niece Sydney (at left) may in fact have been more tired post-Shamu (and really, is there more tired than falling asleep with half a chocolate chip cookie in your mouth?) but only by degrees.
Will report back more soon, but one more photo to share:
But tonight is the "Rock of Love 2" finale. And not that I care who wins (Ambre) but I know the getting there will be hilarious and raunchy.
As it's been all season.
So I have to watch it in realtime. Sorry, folks, the phone is off for the next hour.
Seeya.
The parent I'd most like to emulate has started her own Web site, here.
It's called "Free Range Kids."
They're tasty!
(For the humor free: Children are not food.)
For the record: I have no kids.
But I love "Supernanny." When I watch it, I'm simultaneously reminded why I'm glad I don't have kids, and saddened that these clearly overwhelmed people are the ones raising the next generation. But then Supernanny comes in and puts a few babies in the corner and writes up a few lists and yells at a few vacant-faced parents and then all is well. I'm usually itching to try out her technique when it's done and have to restrain myself from running down the street looking for a child to discipline.
However. I have noticed a few commonalities in the "Supernanny" episodes. For one thing, these families of upwards of four kids have houses that could swallow a schoolroom's worth of them. For another thing, there's absolutely no sense of decoration. It's like they came into their preprogrammed house with the beige carpet and the white walls and threw up a bedroom set, a dining room table and a TV armoire and called it a day. Does anyone have a plant? Art on the walls that didn't come from Bombay Company? Maybe even a coat of paint that doesn't suggest white? Yes, I suppose if you're having difficulties disciplining your eighteen children in the space of a small hangar airport, making sure there's a bookcase with knick-knacks is maybe not a priority. But ... maybe it should have been before you hit child No. 15. It's like watching families try to live in the Soviet Union's idea of suburbia.
The worst part is that -- and I know, this is "reality" television so we're not seeing all of it -- the kids never seem to go out. If they do, it's to their own (highly-fenced-in, can't see beyond the slats) backyard. There's no sense of neighborhood, of going out to play with local kids in the front yard or a nearby playground, no sense of just letting the kids go ride their bikes and have an adventure. In fact, Supernanny has more than once chastised parents who just let their kids go out roaming in the neighborhood. She did take issue with them not telling mom they were going out -- makes sense -- but the larger problem seemed to be that they might be Out There Without Supervision (OTWS).
I love Supernanny. And I state again: No kids. But they're wrong. They're just dead wrong. It makes me so sad to see these kids bored to tears or playing videogames or bouncing around their wrecked basement playroom when it's clearly perfect weather outside and they're driving mom insane anyway. Isn't that what the outdoors is for? To get kids to run off that excess energy and give the parents at home a break? To foster some sense of independence?
Well, I used to think it was a combination of me being childfree and insensitive to the Major Dangers of being OTWS. And that may be some of it. But I read this column today, and I just had to grin.
"(F)or weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”
Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.
Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them."
Sing it, sister. She's taken a lot of shit for it, but I'm with the commenters over at Boing Boing: There's a difference between being the mom in "Gone Baby Gone," who leaves her 3 year old alone in the apartment while she's down at the bar hoovering up illegal drugs and drinking -- and being a parent who assesses her child's maturity and independence and lets him at 9 years old (because that's the kid's age in the story above) assert that maturity and independence.
I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, and was not allowed to ride the Metro alone. Period. Given: The closest stop was a good 15 minute car ride, and until age 16 I had no car, but even then it would have been questionable. So when I was about 14 or 15, probably more like 15, I wanted to go down to see this musician I loved do a signing at Tower Records. He was coming in on a summer's afternoon when I was supposed to be a camp counselor in training, so it wasn't like I'd miss any school. But when I mentioned it to mom, her response was, "Well, it's a shame you can't go." So I kept my trap shut and told camp I wouldn't be in and after mom took my brother to his camp on her way to work while I waited for my ride (to not come), I headed to the bus stop and took the bus to the Metro, and the Metro down to Tower Records, where I met up with my friends and had a jolly old time. Then we all came back together. And guess what: We all came back.
(Confidential to Larry: Mom's never heard this story, so if you're in a mood to keep next Passover weekend on an even keel, you might want to not share this entry.)
I don't know what I'd be like if I had a kid. I'd like to think I'd still back all of this up 100 percent, and that I'd want to raise a kid who would feel comfortable enough in the world that when he or she finally entered it full-time, permanently, on their own, it wouldn't be a foreign territory. But for now, what I'd really like is to know that more parents were acting that way. Because who wants to live in a world where the first time someone's offspring sees the true light of day it blinds them?
So, two Novembers ago, I was down in Texas for Thanksgiving. Craig, my SIL Kris and their then-onliest-child Sydney and I went to the Austin Zoo.
Now, bear in mind, I was accustomed to the Washington, D.C. zoo, and the Bronx Zoo. They were enormous metropolitan monstrosities with attendance to match, particularly when the pandas were out and about. The Austin zoo is barely near Austin itself -- and it's down a dusty set of streets that end on Rawhide Road, where you are in fact at a zoo.
They even have signs warning you what not to do with the monkeys, and what penalties you will suffer if you interfere with the monkeys (click on photo on right to get the full extent of the fine print). Lions, apparently, are fine with the cell phones.
They also have peacocks, which run loose and screech.
Anyway, today I (and possibly thousands of other Flickr users, who knows) had a photo selected from my Austin Zoo trip (of that there peacock) to appear in this tourist type interactive map guide called Schmap. No compensation, but it's still kind of a neat thing. Personally, I think the photos of my niece were far cuter, but I guess they wanted actual residents of the zoo for the map.
I tell you, I could let this Austin thing grow on me. Seriously: The story I've got coming out in Well Told Tales in December takes place in Austin (ish), and now the photo. Maybe someone's trying to send me a message....
Yesterday, my Google Calendar had a new link at the top of it, and I clicked through. But it took me to a 404 page. Which seemed rather disorganized of them.
Today, both my Google Calendar and my gMail had new links:
The second one seemed ... odd. And then intriguing. And, well, is it wrong that I immediately went into "Wow, I bet 'Law & Order' could use this in some kind of an episode where someone uses it to provide themselves an alibi...."
People who know me will understand this thought process.
Of course, they're hoaxes.
But there was that "Law & Order" moment. Which explains much. I've been watching the original since 1995 (with varying degrees of intensity, usually equivalent to the presence of Chris Noth or lack thereof).
And, though I haven't said it here officially (merely alluded broadly), I'm co-authoring the "Law & Order SVU: Unofficial Companion," to be published by BenBella Books in 2009. Thus far, it's involved watching 100 of the 200 episodes (my co-author, Susan Greene, is doing the other half), and come mid-April, we'll both be hanging out on the set for a week. It's been quite a process. Personally, I've been brushing up on my Ice-T so I can rap with the man.
As we get closer to pub date we'll be putting up a Web site and blog, so once that's live I'll pass on the details. Here's a promise to you: You buy anywhere between 100 and 1 million copies of the book, and we'll make a special trip to autograph them all for ya.
Though without my Google Wake Up Call, I might be a little bit late.
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Recent Comments
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Armchair News said:
At least you weren't in a bar at the time!This was definitely not the illegal stuff, but it had plenty... read more
on Lowering my prohibitions -
purly said:
I've had the illegal absinthe, which a friend smuggled into the country. We lit it on fire and drank two... read more
on Lowering my prohibitions -
Armchair News said:
Yeah, I knew this wasn't the Real Deal (TM) but I also didn't want to get poisoned, just toasted. :D read more
on Lowering my prohibitions -
LeendaDLL said:
US-legal absinthe is actually some other kind of liquor with absinthe flavor (which, I guess is licorice). I tried the... read more
on Lowering my prohibitions
yum! read more
on Happiness is....