Lie La Lie

Celebrity Death Watch: Bob Shane sang with the Kingston Trio. Louis Nirenberg was an Abel Prize winning mathematician. Jason Polan was an artist who, among other things, attempted to draw every person in New York City. Harriet Frank, Jr. was a screenwriter. Chris Doleman was a football player. Fred Silverman was a television programmer and producer. Lucien Barbarin was a trombonist with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Anne Cox Chambers co-owned Cox Enterprises. Peter Serkin was a classical pianist. Andy Gill played guitar for Gang of Four. Bernard Ebbers was the CEO of WorldCom who was convicted in a fraudulent accounting scheme and spent 13 years (of a 25 year sentence) in prison. Terry Hands was a theatre director who ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for several years.

Harry Harrison was a disc jockey in New York in the 1960’s through the early 2000’s. I vaguely remember my mother listening to him on WABC, though the only DJs I remember listening to back in the 60’s and 70’s were Cousin Brucie and Wolfman Jack. In later years, I listened to Alex Bennett in San Francisco (who introduced me to a lot of stand-up comics) and Chris Douridas of Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW in Santa Monica.

Frank Press was a geophysicist. He served on various science committees advising the president, including heading the Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Carter. He was the President of the National Academy of Sciences from 1981-1993.

Mary Higgins Clark wrote 51 best-selling suspense novels. I don’t think I’ve read any of her books, which I believe had a bit of the "children in peril" flavor that I don’t much care for. She was on my back-up list for my ghoul pool, alas.

Daniel arap Moi was the President of Kenya for 24 years. He was one of the last "big men" of Africa. He was accused of corruption multiple time and was thought of as a dictator. My understanding is that more of the political disputes he faced were a result of tribalism as he was from the Tugen sub-group of the Kalenjin people, vice the Kikuyu majority. He was another person on my back-up list for the ghoul pool.

Elephant and Castle: I had pre-theatre dinner with friends on Friday night at the Elephant and Castle, which is just about a block and a half from the National Theatre. The food is your basic pub grub. I got chicken pot pie, which was fine, and a decent enough beer, which I’ve forgotten now (and they don’t have their drinks list on-line). But the service was terrible, with a particularly long wait to get our checks. The problem is that most of the other places around that area are either a lot pricier or too noisy to have a conversation, so there are not great options.

The Simon and Garfunkel Story: The reason we needed a restaurant near the National Theatre is that we had tickets to see The Simon and Garfunkel Story there. Bottom line is that I enjoyed the music, but I wished there had been more story. There was a lot of "then they did this album" and the like, but not a huge amount of background on things like the inspiration for song lyrics or most of what was going on in their lives. Overall, this is really a tribute band concert, not musical theatre. There are also lots of projections on a large screen, which was difficult for me to see as (inevitably) the tallest person in the theatre was sitting immediately in front of me. I was also a bit annoyed that they didn’t have a playbill, but the internet says Taylor Bloom played Paul Simon and Ben Cooley played Art Garfunkel.

MiniFest: Saturday was the Folklore Society of Greater Washington Mid-Winter Festival, generally known as the MiniFest. I had a half-hour storytelling set, which I used mostly to tell stories by Sholom Aleichem (and a little bit about him). I had enough time to tell a Chelm story, as well. I thought it went fairly well, as did the other sets of storytelling I listened to.

A Brief Political Note: Being an old person, I feel obliged to remind the youngsters that there really weren’t political primaries until the 1970’s.