my fellow saltimbanques

Saw a reading of Eric Sanders' It's a Dry Heat last night at Playwrights Horizon, put together by a group called Studio 42, directed by Isaac Butler, he of Parabasis. Excellent group of young actors making it sing and always good when you see that a blogger you admire has chops in the real world as well.

I'm a stone fan of Eric's writing, this one is still a draft or two away, I think, but I don't know anyone his age who's capturing his generation's particular sadness and weirdness and humor. This one ends with one of the great modern arias where our heroine spews out an ending scenario in a desperate attempt to push her lover away while clinging on to him, a beautiful Siamese twin wrestling match for her own soul.

Well done all around.

Forgot to mention this yesterday, but in intellectual and other kinds of fairness, we have to acknowledge the times (and the Times) when they get it right. WTFC himself seems not only to like Passing Strange, but to get it. I'm saying "seems" only because I haven't seen the show, but all good people I know have told me its a must-see, not-to-be-missed kind of thing. Which is going to make me feel so bad when I miss it.

I just hate going to the theater. Always have. I go, but I'm a kid getting dragged to church on a Sunday morning when I could be out playing or hell, sleeping in.

Big Damn Day in the Clinton/Obama saga. I don't think it's close to being over, but what do I know?

And the answer to the Big Quiz is Small Faces, of course. That's two weeks in a row that Dancing Annie the Lampshade Queen has seen through my feeble attempts at deception. I should start a two-tiered test, one for Ann and one for Mere Mortals, except that would be far too much work for a simple Museum Director. Spooky Tooth actually was a band, Rose, so there may be a T-shirt out there waiting for you.

This week's prize, oddly enough, is a one hundred dollar gift in your name to Scrappy's Wintertime Fund, in which we raise money to buy whiskey, firewood and prophylactics for the indigent, frozen friends and family of Mr. Jack.

So you're even, Ann.

Unless you want to go Double or Nothing.