Stories and Plays

Celebrity Death Watch: Andrew J. McKenna was the chairman of McDonald’s. Elena Banchini was an Olympic skier. Rene-Samuel Sirat was the chief rabbi of France in the 1980’s. David Jude Jolicoeur, known as Trugoy the Dove, was a third of the hip hop group De La Soul. Huey “Piano” Smith wrote the song “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.” David Ringmaster was a mathematician who, among other things, analyzed puzzles such as Rubik’s cube. Robert Geddes was an architect. Marshall “Eddie” Conway was a Black Panther party leader. Jerry Jarrett was a wrestler. Charley Ferguson played football with the Buffalo Bills in the 1960’s. Catherine McArdle Kelleher was an expert on international security policy. Paul Berg won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on recombinant DNA. Tim McCarver was a catcher, primarily for the St. Louis Cardinals, and later became a sports announcer. Simone Edwards played basketball for the Seattle Storm. Stella Stevens was an actress and Playboy playmate. Gerald Fried wrote music for film and television scores. Rebecca Blank was an economist. Yoshihisa Okumura developed technology for cellphone networks. Thomas Donahue was a labor leader. Red McCombs founded iHeart Media and owned the San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Vikings. Richard Belzer was an actor and comedian, best known for playing John Munch on Homicide: Life on the Street. Bruce Barthel was the bassist for Country Joe and the Fish. Tony Earl was the governor of Wisconsin from 1983 to 1987, James Abourezk was the first Arab-American U.S. senator. Bob Richards was a pole vaulter who became the first athlete to appear on the front of the Wheaties box. Betty Boothroyd was the first woman to be speaker of the UK House of Commons. Just Fontaine was a French soccer star.

Burt Bacharach was a songwriter who, along with Hal David, wrote a lot of pop music. Some of his biggest hits include “This Guy’s in Love With You,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” and “Close to You.” His work appeared on the soundtracks of many major films and his songs were recorded by over 1000 singers.

Ted Lerner owned the Washington Nationals and a lot of Washington area real estate. He was also a significant philanthropist, supporting a number of arts, educational, and Jewish charities. In 2015, Forbes magazine wrote that he was the richest person in Maryland.

Raquel Welch was an actress and sex symbol. Among her most famous movies were One Million Years B.C. and Fantastic Voyage.

David Oreck was in the vacuum cleaner business. He earned me 13 ghoul pool (1 for his place on the list and a 12 point uniqueness bonus).

Barbara Bosson was an actress, best known for playing Faye Furillo on Hill Street Blues.

Weather: The weather here has been all over the place. It was close to 80 on Thursday but cold and windy on Saturday, with snow flurries. At least no snow stuck here. The best thing I read was a comparison to Mother Nature drawing Powerball numbers. I just want it to be spring already. Although, actually, no, since every warm day puts the trees to having sex outside and me to sneezing.

King Thrushbeard: I belong to a discussion group re: the Grimm Fairy Tales. This past Wednesday we talked about King Thrushbeard, a story about two unlikeable people. The princess is a nasty, insulting bully and he is gaslighting her to teach her a lesson. So I was challenged by one of the other people in the group (who knows me fairly well) to find a different way to deal with her. My immediate thought was that she would do very well as a stand-up comic. I despise insult comedy, but at least it would put her natural talents to work. As for King Thrushbeard, who is really a prince, not a king at all, I fear that he is unredeemable. He might make a rather nice victim in a murder mystery, however. After hearing that he rode his horse through her wares in the market when she was starting to have some success making money, any sensible jury would deem whatever she did to him as justifiable. And, by the way, would it really have killed the Grimms to give her the dignity of having an actual name?

The Lifespan of a Fact: I saw this play at the Keegan Theatre on Friday night. This is apparently based on a real incident in which an essay about the suicide of a teenager in Las Vegas was pulled by Harper’s Magazine in 2003, but a fact-checked version was later published by The Believer in 2010. The story revolves around the fact-checking and the question of what liberties with the truth are and aren’t acceptable. The fact-checker, Jim Fingal (played by Ivan Carlo) is overly eager and obsessive - and, frankly, annoying. The essayist, John D’Agata (played by Colin Smith) doesn’t necessarily care about the facts. The editor, played by Sheri S. Herren, tries to mediate things, and seems on the edge of a nervous breakdown through most of this.

The play raises some good questions about the difference between truth and facts. That’s highly relevant to me since my usual tagline about the storytelling I do is that all of my stories are true, whether or not they happened that way. Unfortunately, there isn’t a strong resolution at the end. So, while I found the play interesting, I was not really satisfied by it.

Rubber Ducky Day Storytelling: I was part of a humorous storytelling show on Saturday for Rubber Ducky Day. There was a great mix of material. I adapted a story about things my father told me and their consequences for this purpose, including an episode (not entirely factual) about creating a magic spell to bring rubber bath toys to life. I really did write down “witchcraft” as one of my hobbies on my 9th grade English teacher’s “getting to know you form” and she really did make me give a talk on that subject to the class. But, no, we did not (alas) actually have such a distinction as “most likely to move to California,” no matter how many times I have used that line. My point is that we should have. Anyway, it went well and I got plenty of laughs and great comments in the chat.

Golden Girls - The Laughs Continue: Cindy and I went to see this show at the Warner Theater on Sunday. Before the show, we had lunch at the Elephant and Castle, which is pretty much the only reasonably priced restaurant near there. The food is fairly good, but the service, which has often been a problem there, was atrocious. Anyway, there were two things I hadn’t known when we bought the tickets. 1) Cindy had never actually seen an episode of The Golden Girls so I had to explain who the characters were to her (and, especially, who played each one) and 2) it’s a drag show. I thought the performers nailed the roles, especially Adam Graber as Rose (the Betty White role). The humor is, not surprisingly, very raunchy, particularly since part of the premise is that Blanche and Rose have created a sex app for senior citizens. But for me, the funniest material had to do with references to the actresses who played the various roles. For example, at one point, Blanche says something like “Rose is going to outlive all of us.” And, of course, Betty White did live several years past the other three. They also gave Rose a line in which she says she dreamed she was on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. My very favorite joke had Dorothy (who had been played by Bea Arthur) questioning whether to pursue a show biz career because “I’d die of stage fright. Maybe not die, just be maimed.” I had to explain to Cindy that Bea Arthur had won a Tony for Best Featured Actress for playing Vera Charles in the original production of Mame. Based on the mix of laughs and groans, most of the audience got it.

Anyway, it was a funny show and worth seeing.