fauxklore

I had another busy week last week between work and attempting to catch up at home after having been out of town.

Celebrity Death Watch: Jumping Jackie Jackson was a Harlem Globetrotter. Jim Fowler co-hosted Wild Kingdom.Nurit Karlin was the only woman working as a cartoonist for The New Yorker in the mid-1970’s. She later illustrated several children’s books. Giuliano Bugiallo wrote an influential Italian cookbook. Frederick Brownell designed the flags of South Africa and Namibia. Peggy Lipton was an actress, who people of my generation will probably best remember for her role on Mod Squad.

Doris Day was an actress and singer, with something of a good girl reputation. Her movies included Pillow Talk and The Pajama Game. Her best-known song was probably "Que Sera Sera." I had put her on my ghoul pool list in a reload last year, but had other priorities this year, alas.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Constantino "Gus" Sacino owned Rhodes Delicatessen (and, later, C&S Deli) in my home town of Island Park, NY. In my childhood, Rhodes was more of a general store than what we now think of as a deli. On Sundays, my brother and I would bike over there and pick up a box of Italian pastries and a Sunday New York Times for our parents. We were allowed to spend the change on whatever we wanted to, which was mostly comic books. Maximizing our comic purchases was an incentive for us to get good at mental arithmetic. Gus was always impressed when we’d tell him what the total for our purchases would be.

Encouraging Public Transit: This doesn’t really affect me, but I was pleased to see that Massport has a new program, in which taking the Logan Express Bus to the airport from Back Bay gets you access to an expedited security line. When I go to Boston, I’m generally going to be in Cambridge, where it makes sense to switch from the Red Line to the Silver Line, and I have TSA precheck anyway, so it’s not likely to have any impact on my transit decisions. But it still seems like a nice idea. It would be even nicer if they applied it to the other Logan Express lines.

Metro Story: A writer named Natasha Tynes is apparently having a book contract revoked because she tweeted a photo of a Metro employee in uniform eating on a train, which is against Metro rules (for anyone, not just employees). This is being framed as if her tweet were racially motivated, without any apparent evidence. What annoys me the most is that the news stories cited a May 8th police order telling officers not to issue criminal citations in D.C. for "fare evasion; eating; drinking; spitting; and playing musical instruments without headphones until further advised." Sorry, but fare evasion is stealing and spitting is a public health hazard. The other things are merely annoying, although I suspect that playing music without headphones will inevitably lead to violence by those objecting and eating and drinking result in higher cleaning costs on trains.

There is a real issue about how long the breaks Metro employees get are and whether those are adequate for employees to get meals, but that’s a different subject.

Bar Mitzvah: Saturday was the bar mitzvah of a colleague’s son. He did well on his Torah portion, projecting his voice and sounding reasonably confident. His older brother read one section and was barely audible. The reception was at a rather fancy club and had a candy factory theme, with a cotton candy machine and centerpieces made with lots of candy. I welcomed the opportunity to dress up and had bought a new dress for the event.



The children had a buffet (and arcade games, including skee-ball), while the adults had a sit-down dinner. We had a magician for entertainment, who was surprisingly good. Overall, it was a nice event, though I can’t imagine how much money they spent on it.

On Air: Sunday was also a busy day. In the afternoon, I saw On Air at Creative Cauldron. This was the fifth (and final) piece in their series of Bold New Musicals for Intimate Spaces and told the story of Frank and Flora Conrad and their role in the early days of radio at 8XK and KDKA in Pittsburgh, including broadcasting election returns for the first time. It isn’t clear how historically correct the show is. For one thing, it gives Flora a lot of credit that doesn’t seem to be well-documented. For another, they actually had three children, but only one is part of the show.

But, frankly, the accuracy doesn’t matter. The show was entertaining, with an enjoyable 1920’s score and a lot of warmth. There was interesting tension between workaholic Frank and Flora, echoed in the relationship between his boss, Harry Davis of Westinghouse and his wife, Agnes. And this was further emphasized in their son, Francis, who won a health department contest for killing flies by breeding them in his bedroom.

The performances were also all good. Jimmy Mavrikis (who I’ve seen quite a lot in local shows) was excellent as Frank and well-matched by Nora Palka as Flora. Robert Aubry Davis, who is a big name in classical music radio, played the radio announcer who interviews Flora after Frank’s death. I should also call out Owen Thiebert, a sixth grade student, who played Francis.

All in all, this made for an entertaining afternoon and a fitting closure to the series.

JxJ: The Washington Jewish Film Festival and Washington Jewish Music Festival have been combined this year into one event, called JxJ. Last night, I went to see a documentary called Chewdaism: A Taste of Jewish Montreal, which was made by Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion of the web series Yidlife Crisis. It was pretty entertaining but I will wait until my quarterly movie rundown to say more. They did a Q&A afterwards with Jamie and Eli, which was, unfortunately, dominated by people who wanted to talk and didn’t have actual questions.

For the record, I like Montreal smoked meat better than I like either pastrami or corned beef. But I prefer New York bagels to Montreal bagels, which I find too sweet. (And I prefer bialys to either.)

Celebrity Death Watch: Mason Lowe was a professional bull rider, who was killed by a bull. John Bogle founded the Vanguard Group, popularizing index funds. Mary Oliver was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Glen Wood was a NASCAR driver. Brian Stowell was a linguist who, among other things, translated Alice in Wonderland into Manx. Tony Mendez was the real-life spy who the movie Argo was based on. Nathan Glazer wrote important books about American ethnicity, with something of a focus on Judaism.

Should Have Been Celebrity Death Watch: Anne Thomas died yesterday. She was an amazing woman – a storyteller, a writer, a world traveler, an activist – who didn’t let being a paraplegic get in the way of anything she really wanted to do. I will miss her and her stories.

Desserts: We didn’t get much snow on Saturday, so there was no sugar in the snow. As for other desserts, I got as far as making cranberry bread pudding. Mostly because I had cranberries that needed to get used up.

Gulf View Drive: On Friday, I decided I was in the mood to go to the theatre and a quick look at Goldstar showed me that the Washington Stage Guild had a production of Gulf View Drive by Arlene Hutton on offer. I had really enjoyed See Rock City, so this play made a lot of sense to see. (They’re the second and third plays in a trilogy. While I haven’t seen the first, Last Train to Nibroc, they stand alone quite well.)
As I expected, this was an enjoyable evening . There are interesting issues, including domestic violence and racism, but the focus is still on family dynamics. The performances were uniformly very good, with Laura Giannarelli especially convincing as the domineeringly awful Mrs. Brummett. It’s playing through February 9th. I recommend it to D.C. area theatre goers.

Lunar Eclipse: I didn’t stay up for last night’s lunar eclipse. I’ve seen a lot of lunar eclipses, for one thing. And it was insanely cold out.

Fruit: Today is Tu B’Shvat, which is that Jewish equivalent of Arbor Day, though actually the New Year for Trees. It’s traditional to eat fruit. When I was a child, we’d get trays in Hebrew school that had a lot of dried fruit – figs, prunes, dates, raisins, apricots, and bokser (carob), if I recall correctly. The only ones of those I liked were apricots and bokser. I’ve been making a point of eating fruit every day and have this mental debate about whether dried fruit counts. I’ve decided it does, but only once or twice a week. I didn’t think of it when I was grocery shopping, but I might have bought some dates (which I do eat nowadays), as well as the kiwi fruit that I did got this week. (Mostly because it was on sale.) I still have a good supply of clementines, too.

Now I am really craving bokser.

Celebrity Death Watch: Bill Walsh was not only a copy editor for The Washington Post, but wrote three cleverly titled books on the subject of copy editing - Lapsing Into a Comma, The Elephants of Style, and Yes, I Could Care Less. Phil Garland was a New Zealand folk singer. I particularly recommend his song "To the Tall Ships" (with lyrics by Joe Clark). James Cotton played blues harmonica. Derek Walcott was a Caribbean poet and Nobel laureate. Lawrence Montaigne was an actor with numerous television and movie appearances, as well as being in the original cast of Shinbone Alley. Felicia O’Dell was the internet celebrity chef Auntie Fee. Chuck Berry was a rock and roll superstar, but you didn't need me to tell you that. Jimmy Breslin was a columnist for Newsday and Son of Sam’s favorite penpal. David Rockefeller headed Chase Manhattan and chaired the Museum of Modern Art. I have reservations about his foreign policy activities (which may have, for example, helped trigger the Iran hostage crisis) but there is little doubt that he was a significant philanthropist with broad interests. Martin McGuiness was an IRA leader who became a peacemaker. Colin Dexter wrote the Inspector Morse series of mysteries. He also wrote a book about how to solve cryptic crosswords.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Mary Joan Trafton was a colleague and a close friend. We started working for Milo at the same time and, over the course of numerous business trips, discovered compatible ways of thinking. This was especially true on trips to Boulder, where we realized that High Crimes, a mystery bookstore, would be open late when they had a signing. She was always willing to try out new restaurants and we spent lots of evenings exploring the crème brulees of Boulder. We had similar senses of humor, which included things like buying Milo a pointy-haired boss wig, which he wore when he did our performance reviews. She had been ill with cancer for a while, so her death was not a surprise, but it is still always painful to lose a friend. I am still waiting to hear what the arrangements will be and hope I will be able to go to whatever ceremony happens. At the very least, Suzanne (our other partner in crime) and I will do something.

Mrs. Miller Does Her Thing: I saw this new show at Signature Theatre on Saturday afternoon. Mrs. Elva Miller was a real person, who achieved a brief career in the mid-1960’s as a horrible singer. Debra Monk portrayed her and did an excellent job of both the bad singing and the moments when we glimpse her self-perception. Boyd Gaines played her husband, who was convalescing in a nursing home after a stroke. He was also convincing in a role that focused on his frustration over his condition. Then there is her niece, Joelle, played by Rebekah Brockman, who is torn between the fear that she is part of a group exploiting her aunt and the knowledge that Mrs. Miller is having fun with the whole experience. There is some generation gap material and some more serious topical material (e.g. re: Vietnam). But the real point is about following dreams. That makes Mrs. Miller surprisingly sympathetic. I will note, however, that I dearly hope nobody ever decides to produce a cast album of this show!

Story Swap: Our monthly swap was on Saturday night and was, as usual, fun. I took advantage of the late arrival of our teenage tellers to perform X. J. Kennedy’s poem, "In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day." Later on, I told "Tia Miseria." There was the usual wide mix of stories and, later on, snacks and conversation.

World Storytelling Project: Yesterday being World Storytelling Day, I announced a project to learn a story from every country in the world. I am using the U.S. State Department list of independent countries, which has 195 countries on it. Obviously, I already know stories from some of these (and have personal stories from a few.) This is not the sort of thing I intend to put any particular deadline on, but it should be a fun challenge. And, yes, I have picked out a story from Afghanistan to tell.

Note to Coworker Down the Hall: Close your door when you are having a conference call, damn it!

Celebrity Death Watch: Pete Fountain was a jazz clarinetist. Joani Blank was the founder of Good Vibrations, the San Francisco store that made vibrators mainstream. Michel Richard was a celebrity chef and one of the people most responsible for making Washington, D.C. a major culinary destination.

Fyvush Finkel is probably better known nowadays for his television roles but, of course, he was a huge star in the world of Yiddish theatre. And he showed up in movies all the time – more or less whenever somebody needed an old man with a Yiddish accent.

Glenn Yarbrough was a folksinger and, in particular, the lead singer of The Limeliters. I grew up listening to their albums and some of their songs, especially some of the comic ones, were major influences on my musical tastes.

I should note that I make no claim to be comprehensive in these items. They happen to have caught my attention for one reason or another, which is not necessarily correlated with how famous or how important they were. I usually write a little bit more about people who I felt more of a personal connection to for whatever reason, but there’s no guarantee.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: My evil twin, Holly Stowe, passed away last week. We got friendly back in the early usenet days largely over shared viola-associated trauma. (That is, the whole bit that lets you play only three notes every ten measures.) We met in person at a weekend event in Indianapolis that included a Halloween party in which we did a tandem costume as Velcro. Her death was not a surprise as she had been dealing with late-stage kidney disease for some time. But I’m still sad.

Another Death Story: I had a reminder that depression is all too often a fatal disease. It isn’t my story to tell, so I will not elaborate, but I will plead that if you are having issues with depression, please, please, please, do all you can to get help.

New York Gelato Tasting: I was up in New York over the weekend, primarily for Lollapuzzoola 9, which I will write about separately. In the evening, I went down to the Village to go to the theatre (which will also merit its own write-up) and, having asked for ice cream advice on facebook, sampled two places. The first was Victory Garden, whose gimmick is that they use goat milk. I tried a flavor called Black Magic, which consisted of a black tahini (i.e. sesame) and cocoa base with salted caramel and chocolate chips. It was quite good, with a nice creamy texture, but possibly a bit too intense in flavor. At any rate, I would certainly go there again and try other flavors of their ice creams.

I also tried a place called Cones, where I got a small cup with two flavors (and, also, sampled a taste of their mascarpone which also had some sort of berries). The two flavors I opted for, however, were the zabayone [sic] and ginger. I was a bit disappointed in the former, though that may have been the influence of their spelling failure. It’s zabaglione, damn it! The ginger was, however, excellent. (Bear in mind that I have a particular fondness for ginger, so may be biased.) I’m actually less inclined to go back there than I am to go back to Victory Garden, mostly because it wasn’t necessarily any different than gelato I can get at lots of places.

The Waldorf-Astoria: Due to some Hilton Honors promotion, it was actually cheaper to stay at The Waldorf-Astoria than it was to stay at a normal chain hotel like a Hampton Inn. So why not? In fact, they upgraded me to a room in the Waldorf Towers, which mostly meant that the room was huge. Given how little time I spend in hotel rooms for anything but sleep, that wasn’t significant. Anyway, it was perfectly fine, but if you are going to stay somewhere fancy in NYC, I preferred the time I stayed at The Algonquin. Even better (but much harder to get a deal at) is The Library Hotel, where they ask you "fiction or nonfiction?" when checking in.

Trains: I had good train karma getting up to New York with snort waits for both the yellow and red lines and Amtrak being on time. Although Union Station was its usual Friday night chaos, made worse by most of the info signs being out. (I now know they use Windows XP for their displays. That is not a reassuring thing.)

The train karma did not, alas, continue for the trip home. Amtrak was having various delays due to a train stuck in an East River tunnel. So we started out a half hour late. And then there was a power outage affecting signals in part of Maryland, so we were moving very very very very very very slowly. A 10 minute wait for the Red Line wasn’t too bad. But, of course, Metro had a screw-up on the Orange Line, so I had almost a 20 minute wait at Metro Center. So, overall, I got home too late to really do anything but collapse.

Here are various odds and ends, with no theatre involved.

Celebrity Death Watch: Harold Ramis was an interesting comic actor. Sean Potts played the tin whistle and was one of the founders of The Chieftains.

Retiring Celebrity Watch: Carl Kassell of NPR is retiring. I am not sure what impact that will have on the value of my Carl Kassell doll. Not that I was planning to sell.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Leslie Perry had been suffering from ALS for the past five years, so his death is not surprising. He was a mainstay of the Los Angeles storytelling community and a great builder of community, as well as a fine storyteller. I remember, in particular, a letter he once sent out that pointed out the need for storytellers to support one another, attending and advertising other tellers’ programs, for example. He also talked about the need for tellers to tell the difficult stories. Both of those triggered discussions that have influenced how I try to deal with storytelling. After he became ill, he had two books published, had a play produced, and was the subject of a documentary. He may not have been a household name, but Leslie was a celebrity in my community and in my life. He was a good man and I will miss him.

Weather: We got about 5 inches of snow on Monday. This had been predicted, so I had brought my laptop home and was productive. But it is proof that I don’t live in Camelot, where winter exits March the second on the dot.

Washington Jewish Film Festival: Because of the snow, the showing of The Herring Queens (a documentary about Lower East Side appetizing store, Russ and Daughters) on Monday night was cancelled. So the only WJFF event I made it to was not a film, but a Yiddish music program on Tuesday night. That featured Cantor Sara Geller and was a mix of concert and sing-along. She has a fine voice, but the songs she did started out with art songs, which are not really what I was expecting. The sing-along part was fine but consisted entirely of overly familiar songs. Can we please have some Yiddish music event someday that does not feature "Oyfen Pripitchik," "Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen," and "Tubalalaika?" The rest of the concert part was somewhat more to my taste, since it was largely theatre music. My favorite piece was "It’s Tough" (sung in English), which tells of the tragedy when Izzy Rosenstein loves Genevieve Malone.

In Other News: Between various work and non-work commitments, I am stressed and frustrated and grouchy. It is a good thing I am not a violent person.

And now I am all caught up. Of course, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is this weekend, so I will be behind again. And my non-LJ to-do list is the length of my arm. But I’ll take what small victories I can.

I am slowly catching up on things. Being perpetually busy does not help.

Celebrity Death Watch: The celebrity deaths I want to note for May include Dr. Joyce Brothers (newspaper psychologist and boxing trivia maven), Andrew Greeley (Catholic priest and author), and Jean Stapleton (actress, best known as Edith Bunker). But the one that stands out the most for me is that of Billie Sol Estes. Unless you are a fan of the Chad Mitchell Trio, the name may not mean much to you, but the short version is that he was convicted of fraud for a scheme involving mortgages on non-existent fertilizer tanks. As the song goes,"“Here’s to the greatest biggest embezzler of all." (By the way, this isn’t just me. My mother made a point of mentioning his death when I called her after getting back from my vacation and we sang, "Hey Billie Billie, Hey Billie Billie Sol" together. That may be proof of a congenital basis for earworms.)

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Ralph Chatham is gone. I’m somewhat at a loss for what to say. Ralph was a storyteller and organizer / promoter of storytelling events, retired naval submarine officer, and physicist. He spent a couple of years at DARPA and worked on things like the Grand Challenge (involving autonomous vehicles) and training tools for language learning. He told Jack tales, personal stories, and literary stories. He shared my fondness for Saki and Gilbert and Sullivan and narrative poetry. I carpooled with Ralph and his widow, Margaret, to many an event and he was always full of wide-ranging conversation. His death was not a surprise as he had been diagnosed with brain cancer about a year ago, but it is still a huge loss to our community. I am honored to have called him friend.

The Yeoman of the Guard: The first weekend in May featured a trip up to Delaware to see The Ardensingers’ production of The Yeoman of the Guard. The significance of this is that I have now seen every extant Gilbert and Sullivan operetta live, which is a life list item. (The "extant" qualifier is there because of Thespis which is mostly lost, though there are sporadic attempts to recreate it.) Anyway, the production was fun. I thought Jay Anstee was good as Colonel Fairfax, but Jeffrey Grant stole the show as Wilfred Shadbolt. I also want to note Mary Punshon as Elsie Maynard. My favorite song from this show remains "A man who would woo a fair maid."

By the way, I stayed up that way (well, a bit further south) overnight and stopped in at Delaware Park for dinner and a bit of gambling. It was amazingly crowded. I’d have thought that the spread of casino gambling to Maryland would have an impact, but it didn’t appear to.

Maryland Sheep and Wool: Part of the reason for staying overnight in Delaware was to make it more direct to stop off at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Sunday morning. As I have probably explained before, this is the largest fiber festival in the Eastern United States and is something of a cross between a county fair and the world’s largest yarn store. I was trying to stick to just buying things I needed for a couple of specific projects but a couple of other things (e.g. a book of patterns for knitted dinosaurs) jumped into my bags. Afterwards, I stopped off at knitting group and showed off my purchases.

Washington Jewish Music Festival: I made it to two shows at this year’s WJMF. The first was Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All-Stars Klezmer Bhangra Extravaganza. This featured Deep Singh on percussion and vocalist Manu Narayan, along with the klezmer band. The mash-up of Yiddish and Indian traditions (with a hefty dose of jazz thrown in) worked amazingly well. My only complaint is that the set-up at the Jewish Community Center had nowhere to dance.

The second show was a Broadway sing-along. Joshua Morgan led things at the piano, with Bayla Whitten and Will Gartshore as song leaders. I was disappointed for two reasons. The first was that I thought Morgan did too much shtick. Shut up about how much of the audience you’ve slept with, stop the rambling stories about your horrible auditions, and let everybody enjoy singing! The other issue was some dubious choices of songs. Many of the selections were fine and obvious (e.g. "If I Were a Rich Man") but there were several that were chosen without much thought of their singability by amateurs. I found it particularly egregious to choose "Children Will Listen" as one of the Sondheim selections. "Comedy Tonight" would be a much better choice. Not that the event was a complete flop, but I’d give it a B-minus. Since the premise is one you would think would be an easy A for me, that’s a significant miss.

Ballet – The Sun Also Rises: This was the final show of my Washington Ballet season subscription. An adaptation of a Hemingway novel seemed an unlikely choice for a ballet, but it turned out to be my favorite of the season. (Well, maybe tied with Dracula.) The score (by Billy Novick) suited the story and Septime Webre’s choreography meshed with the music and atmosphere and scenery. I expected the Pamplona scene to be visually exciting (and it was, with added video). That the rest of the ballet worked as well as it did was both a surprise and a delight.

I should also note that prior to this season, I would have said I favor going to ballet programs that consist of a few one act ballets. But it has been the full-length ballets (both from the Washington Ballet and other companies) that I’ve enjoyed and the mixed repertory programs I’ve found unsatisfying. It appears that I need to rethink my strategy.

Story Swap: I know I went to a story swap. I know it was a small group, possibly because of weather. I have to admit I don’t remember anything else specific about it.

Pro Musica Hebraica: I go to this series largely to support the idea of presenting Jewish classical music. The spring concert featured the Apollo Ensemble performing Jewish baroque music from Italy and Amsterdam. If you are at all knowledgeable about the subject, you are already muttering something about Salamone de Rossi, who is pretty much considered the first major Jewish composer. There were also pieces by Marco Uccellini, Giacobo Basevi Cervetto and M. Mani, as well as by non-Jewish composers (notably Lidarti and Handel) touching on Jewish themes. Many of the pieces were rescued from fragments in the Etz Chayim library of Amsterdam and much of the appeal of the evening (and of the series) was getting to hear rarities. I continue to question what (if anything) makes much of this work identifiably Jewish, but I suspect the answer is similar to the one Howard Schwartz gives regarding Jewish stories. To wit, a story is Jewish if it is told (or written) by a Jew, involves Jewish times (e.g. holidays) or places (all stories set in Jerusalem are Jewish until proven otherwise) or has some other Jewish connection. That still leaves me puzzled over Bernstein’s Mass, but so be it. Getting back to the concert at hand, I should also note that I particularly appreciate the extensive notes by Professor James Loeffler of the University of Virginia.

Vacation: And then I flew off on a trip to Singapore (with a side trip to Melaka, Malaysia), Australia (Perth for OzFest, followed by taking the Indian Pacific Railroad to Adelaide) and Hong Kong / Macau. I accomplished another life list item by drinking a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel. It was very pricy (SGD30 ish with the service charge) and decidedly not worth it.

Which brings me to June and other things I need to catch up about later.

Good Jobs for Women: There was a piece in Forbes several weeks ago listing the 10 best jobs for women. Aerospace engineer came in 10th. For the record, many jobs on the list had some science / math orientation, e.g. oceanographer (3), geoscientist (8), surveyor (6). Supreme galactic empress was not on the list, alas, but I still aspire to that one.

Odd Advertising: I get a number of circulars in the mail with discounts for local businesses. Restaurant ads usually have pictures of food. I understand most of these, e.g. kebabs for the Persian place and stir fried something or other for the Chinese restaurant. But why on earth is a restaurant whose tag line is "Get to know our homemade food" advertising itself with a photo of a plate of toast?

Customer Service: I have cooled off from my bad experiences with several companies, but I will note that it is very annoying when either clicking on a discount or logging into your account (which has the link for getting a discount in it) makes the price of an Amtrak ticket go up by 20 bucks. I know how to circumvent this (which sometimes requires buying two one-way tickets instead of a round trip one) but they have known about this for a couple of years and show no interest in fixing it.

Do I Want to Read This? Mark Leyner has a new novel out. I will admit to having liked My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist but could he possibly have more to say?

Celebrity Death Watch: King George Tupou V of Tonga died recently. The interesting part is that he died in a hospital in Hong Kong. As you may recall, the Tongan treasury was greatly increased by the sale of Tongan citizenship to people from Hong Kong who were concerned about China's intention, but much of that money was embezzled by their court jester. That was under the previous king but it is still such a good story that I can't resist repeating it.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Mara Chibnik lost her battle to pancreatic cancer. She was a calm and intelligent presence back in the good old days of Usenet (and a few mailing lists we were on). She influenced my thinking on a range of subjects, including gender, sexuality, aging, and books. I will miss her.

Speaking of Sexuality: I saw the documentary Trembling Before G-d Saturday night as part of the Northern Virginia International Jewish Film Festival. Homosexuality in the Orthodox Jewish world is more talked about now than it was when this film was made over a decade ago, but it is still (obviously) a controversial subject. I found the movie interesting and moving, especially a scene in which an older man talks about his estrangement from his family, saying "I'm 68 years old and I want my daddy" before singing "Shalom Aleichem."

Brother Russia: As I've mentioned before, I subscribe to Signature Theatre largely in order to support their productions of new musicals. This is their latest and was, in my opinion, an interesting failure. I didn't have problems with using the life of Rasputin as the subject of a musical, but I didn't see the need to place it in the "play within a play" mode involving a theatre troupe. I may also know too much about Russian history to have been able to get past the (admitted) fabrications, which do get called out by one actor later on. The music was just okay, with the only particularly memorable song being a lively celebration of vodka. (My experience, however, is that Russians of the class frequenting that tavern would actually be more likely to drink beer or kvass.) The performances were fine (especially Nastascia Diaz as Anastasia). The choreography was remarkably dull and the whole thing was too long. Overall, this might have been better off with a year or three of workshops to figure out what it is supposed to be and edit it into a more satisfying show.