fauxklore

Continuing the catch-up, May finished on another busy note.

I went to a Story Swap the last Thursday of May. The next day (i.e. the last Friday) I went to a Profs and Pints lecture about cats in folklore, which was pretty entertaining, though a bit Eurocentric. (There was some material about Japan, but I don’t recall anything about Latin America or Africa. However, I was tired, and it is always possible I just zoned out.)

The weekend was occupied with my (virtual) 40th college reunion. Actually, I dialed into the graduation ceremonies on Friday, which was surprisingly moving,, with an especially good speech by Admiral McRaven. Saturday was Tech Day, with talks about current research and a theme of Geniuses and Game Changers. The most interesting talk was about food safety by Deborah Blum. She talked about some of the horrible history of food adulteration, e.g. “preserved milk,” which had formaldehyde added to it. Other talks had to do with nanoparticles, AI, and brain complexity. After that were several overlapping sessions and I chose one on experiential learning (including undergraduate research) in the time of COVID-19. I was, frankly, too tired at that point to really listen well. There really needed to be breaks between sessions to get up and move around, but the Q&As tended to un all the way to the end of the time slot and there was barely time for a bio break,

My class didn’t participate much in the Tech Challenge games. I usually enter a lot of haikus into the poetry competition, but only managed 3 this time:

My world’s moved on-line
Instead of face to face life,
I’m a box on zoom.


COVID-19 has
upended all our lives. Mask
wearing’s now routine.


Zoom's gallery view?
Or is it the opening
to Hollywood Squares?


That last one did get read out when they were reviewing results, which is about all one can really hope for in this sort of thing.


Later in the day, my class had a get-together, which featured a couple of space-related talks. One of my classmates was an astronaut and was quite entertaining. The other talk was about TESS, a mission to search for exoplanets. I’ve heard several talks before on that subject, so it wasn’t as interesting. We had a brief around-the-room catch-up for everyone after the talk, which was nice. It was a good event, but I really would have liked more social time.

The annual meeting of the alumna group (i.e. women graduates) was on Sunday. Aside from the business meting part, there was a keynote speaker, who talked about COVID-19 vaccine development. There were also break-out sessions. I went to one that had a topic about self-care, which proved to be rather too new age woo-woo for my tastes. Fortunately, the break-out sessions were short, and we reconvened for a closing ceremony, I should also mention that my freshman year roommate was on the call, but I didn’t talk with her. Which is kind of like our actual experience sharing a room. Let’s just say, we were remarkably incompatible roommates, but we got along okay by ignoring one another.

I have other things to write about, but let me drop a quick note re: how miserable this week has been for commuting. Monday was tolerable, but the metro was running on a holiday schedule, which meant long waits at Rosslyn for connecting trains.

Tuesday, the cold weather caused a different problem. But it is best to say it in my preferred poetic form:

Cracked rail outside East
Falls Church this morning. Single
tracking. Late to work.


And, of course, I just missed my connection, so:

It is as cold at
Rosslyn station as it is
outside. Brr, brr, brr.


Was it any better going home? Well, I had an errand to run near Union Station. I got on the Yellow Line at Crystal City and then:

Someone unconscious
on train at Archives. Single
tracking, long delays.


So yesterday I had a meeting for which it made sense to drive in. (I can get to where it was by bus, but that eats up a lot of time and is only worth it if meeting is at beginning or end of the day, not in the middle.) Things were slow coming in, for no particular reason. Going home was the issue. It wasn't even snowing until I was halfway home, but it was still slow. And, once there was a bit of sticking snow, it was just a slippery, nasty crawl.

Note that we got a whopping 1.2 inches of snow and it messed things up badly enough that it took me twice as long as normal to drive home. We are expecting 24-30 inches in the storm that is going to clobber us this weekend.
I am not going more than about 200 feet from my bed.

Please, buy me a condo in Punta del Este, Uruguay?

Celebrity Death Watch: Casey Kasem probably didn’t originate the pop music count down, but is widely associated with it. Tony Gwynn was one of a handful of baseball players who remained with a single team (the San Diego Padres) his entire Major League career. Ultra Violet was an artist and Andy Warhol’s muse for more than 15 minutes.

Yemen Blues: Thursday night saw me at the DC Jewish Community Center to see Yemen Blues perform. This is a fusion band, led by Ravid Kahalani. I’m not entirely sure how one would characterize their music, which is why the "world beat" label is handy. The largest influence is Yemenite (duh), but there are West African rhythms and blues and other jazz forms. The percussion was particularly notable and there was one piece I can best describe as an intriguing battle between Middle Eastern and Latin percussion. There was also some notable oud playing. My one complaint was that the space was not really conducive to movement and this was music that demanded to be danced to. From my Israeli folk dance days, I know that the dancing of Yemenite Jews was traditionally very constrained in space and primarily up and down, with the explanation that the people did not love the land, so they danced as if their feet were on fire. So maybe that was suitable after all. (Actually, I do have another complaint. The concert started 20 minutes late. That’s a lot on a weeknight. But it was good enough that I will forgive them.)

Ordinary Days: Friday night I schlepped to Bethesda to see Ordinary Days, a musical (really a song cycle) by Adam Gwon. It was worth the effort as the show was thoroughly charming. The story involves two pairs of New Yorkers. The best of the characters is the semi-hysterical grad student, Deb, well-played by Erin Weaver. The free-spirited Warren is her foil and helps her to see that there is beauty in the small things in life. The other couple, Jason and Claire, are less satisfying characters. For one thing, he belongs in, say, Iowa and he’s really only in New York because he fell for her. But, more significantly, there is some great trauma that keeps her from letting him in and we don’t find out what the twist is until almost the end of the show. The revelation (in the song "I’ll Be Here") makes her a lot more sympathetic, but I found it hard to believe she’d been with Jason an entire year and not told him about it. But, overall, that’s a minor flaw. The music is lovely. And there is plenty of wit in the lyrics, along with delicious subtle tidbits, e.g. when Deb, who is doing her thesis on Virginia Woolf, makes a reference to having a room of her own. A show like this is a good reminder of why Gwon is considered one of the rising stars of the musical theatre world.

And, look, unlike everyone else in the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area, I managed to write about the show without using the word "extraordinary!" (But it is.)


Ah, Metro – Last Monday night’s Red Line Haiku Version:
Metro’s web site claims
single tracking starts at 10.
Half hour wait at 9.

Ah, Metro – Friday night’s Haiku Version:
Track fire delayed Blue
Line. Had I known, I would have
taken the yellow.

Bethesda station
has the worst escalators
in the whole system.

(Yes, I understand that Metro’s priority is to get people out of the stations. But there was really no reason for both working escalators to be going up at 9:30 at night. Walking down the half mile long non-working escalator is hard on the knees of this grumpy old person.)

The Weekend: I spent much of it sleeping, though I did get some errands done. And I made it to knitting group where I showed off my "it’s not stash, it’s souvenir" yarn purchase from Italy. I have this idea for a patchwork jacket using these odds and ends I have picked up in various places. It will be a while before I start on that project, but I am already referring to it as A Coat of Many Countries. What I actually did was crochet afghan squares because I need to destash a bunch of acrylic and that is a good way to do so. And it is also brainless enough that I can do it while talking.

Moral Dilemma of the Week: Neptune needs a bath. Normally, I look for a group of teenagers doing a car wash for charity. Well, Arlington County has banned charity carwashes because of the impact of run-off on the Chesapeake. Fairfax County has not done so yet, but I do actually care about the Bay. Apparently, commercial carwashes are okay because they have ways to capture grey water. But I still feel like I’d rather have my money going to a school band or the like than to Mr. Wash.

The Prostate Dialogues: Last night’s outing was to see Jon Spelman’s one-man show at Theatre J. I know Jon and I admire his storytelling, so I can’t give this an unbiased review. It’s a brave show, with a surprising amount of humor. In addition to his experience with prostate cancer, the work deals more generally with issues of aging and mortality and what manhood is. I’m not sure how somebody under, say, 50 will react, but I found lots to relate to, even without a prostate. By the way, there was a talk-back, but I didn't stay for it because going out on a weeknight means enough sleep deprivation as it is.

Commute Miracle – the Tuesday morning haiku version:
Seven-forty-three
bus to the Mark Center came at
seven forty-three.

Some Like It Hot: I like hot weather, but the current heat and humidity, which is reminiscent of Benin, is too much, even for me.

Books and Gelato: Since I was already over at Dupont Circle last night, I stopped in the used bookstore there. And I found a copy of Don Camillo Meets Hell's Angels. I didn't even know about that one. Afterwards, I stopped in at Dolcezza Gelato. The cinnamon was good, but the winner there was the strawberry tarragon, which may be the only good pink thing on the planet.

This is mostly the theatre-going part of my catching up. But, first, a couple of other items.

Baseball: The Nationals had a mid-season deal to get tickets for three games (one each n July, August and September) and a cap for about $45. So I braved the Fourth of July tourist crowds and went into the city to see them play the Giants. The game was an exciting one, with the Nats winning 9-4. I had some issues, however, with my seat, as it was right behind one of the protective pieces of plexiglass, leading to annoying reflections blocking my view at times.

Celebrity Death Watch: There are lots of celebrity deaths to report. Doris Sams played baseball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which inspired the movie A League of Their Own. There may be no crying at baseball, but there is at funerals.

Nora Ephron wrote amusingly bitchy feminist essays, along with some movies. I didn’t always agree with her, but her work was usually interesting.

Lonesome George was the last Pinta tortoise, so his death also means the extinction of his sub-species. I saw him when I went to the Galapagos. He looked sad, but I think tortoises inherently look sad.

Andy Griffith was, of course, most famous for his TV performances as the sheriff of Mayberry. I once went to Mt. Airy, North Carolina (his home town) and ate lunch at a diner that had dishes named after the characters from his show. By the way, unlike most tourists, my interest in the town had to do with two of its other residents. It was also where Chang and Eng Bunker, the Siamese twins, settled.

The celebrity death I most want to highlight was that of Richard Adler. With Jerry Ross (who died at a young age of pneumonia), he co-wrote The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. Anybody who knows me at all, knows why the latter is among my favorite Broadway musicals. (Note that the Red Sox are playing four games against the Source of All Evil in the Universe this weekend.)

First You Dream: Speaking of musicals, I saw First You Dream at The Kennedy Center a couple of weeks ago. This is a revue of Kander & Ebb songs, without any particular narrative and with very little dialogue. It was enjoyable, largely because of some excellent performances, notably by Matthew Scott and Heidi Blickenstaff. I particularly want to note Scott’s performance of the Hungarian bit from “Cell Block Tango.”

There is some incongruity, however, as the songs are taken out of context. For example, I suspect that most of the audience had no idea that “Go Back Home” (from The Scottsboro Boys) is sung in the musical by a teenager who has been sentenced to death for a rape he didn’t commit. Similarly, the selections from Kiss of the Spider Woman gave no indication that they are sung by a political prisoner.

Still, the songs are enjoyable in and of themselves and I admit to having particularly liked a few unfamiliar songs I don’t actually know the context of. Some highlights include “Ring Them Bells” from Liza with a Z, “Military Men” from Over and Over and “I Miss the Music” from Curtains. (Okay, I do know the context of the latter – and I also know that the show was completed by John Kander after Fred Ebb died, making it particularly poignant.) The greatest show-stopper was “Boom Ditty Boom” from 70, Girls, 70), which was an incredible showcase for Karma Camp’s choreography. I really need to be more familiar with this show, since the description I’ve read of it sounds quite entertaining. (And I also like the song “Coffee in a Cardboard Cup,” which is from it.)

I will also admit to disliking the title song and feeling hit over the head with its message, but that was a minor flaw in an otherwise enjoyable evening.

The History of Invulnerability: All I knew about this play at Theatre J was that it had to do with Superman creator Jerry Siegel and how he (and artist Joe Shuster) were pretty much screwed over by Harry Donenfeld and National Allied Publications. There’s actually a lot more to David Bar Katz’s play, including a provocative Holocaust story, involving a young boy in Auschwitz-Birkenau whose smuggled comic books leave him fantasizing about Superman rescuing him. The structure is a conversation between Superman and his creator, which also brings in Siegel’s estrangement from his real-life son. Is Superman Siegel’s true son, a god, or a golem?

Given the complexity of the play – and the shocking moments in it – I am loathe to write a lot of details about what happens. I will say that I found myself saying, “wow” out loud at the end of the first act and having more mixed reactions when the play ended. Those reactions were both entirely due to the Holocaust sub-plot.

All in all, I’ll recommend it for what it has to say about creativity and the response to being a powerless outsider. I can also commend the performances, especially by David Deblinger as Siegel. But be aware that this is a dark and disturbing piece, not a light romp through the comics.

The Music Man: Finally, I saw The Music Man at Arena Stage on Tuesday night. I had a bit of frustration with the box office as I had bought the ticket via Goldstar and the guy at Will Call initially gave me a balcony ticket for The Normal Heart instead and I had to actually argue with them (showing my receipt) to get what I had paid for.

Anyway, there aren’t any real surprises in this production. It’s familiar material, intended to balance the season budget with a sure-fire blockbuster. Kate Baldwin is excellent as Marian the librarian and Burke Moses is a competent Harold Hill. I do have two complaints about the production. The first is the modernization of the costumes, which is an annoying anachronism. (Marian wearing trousers? No.) My bigger issue is having left out the overture. It is bad enough that so many musicals are written without overtures nowadays. Why delete them from shows that are intended to have them? Especially since they are often a good way to get the laggards in the audience to shut up.

The most thrilling moment in the production, by the way, came at the end of the curtain calls, when the doors opened and an actual marching band came in, playing “76 Trombones.”. They do not, apparently, do this every night. I heard that the band in question was from New Jersey and in town for the Fourth of July parade the next day.

Note to self: check Nationals schedule before going to Arena Stage, as the ballpark is one stop away from the theatre. It’s bad enough that I have to deal with metro crowding when I go to ballgames. But that is the subject of another rant.

A Very Brief Transit Rant: The Washington Post has a transit columnist called Dr. Gridlock. His repeated advice to people who complain about Metro annoyances is to tell them just to drive. That’s like criticizing people who want to improve public schools by telling them to send their kids to private school.

My biggest complaint, by the way, is about riders who won’t let people off before they board the trains. Hence, this haiku:

Basic courtesy
Is all too rare among those
Who ride on metro.

I have an unexpected weekend free, so here's another catch-up entry.

Free Weekend: I had planned to go to Staunton for a VASA board meeting and stay overnight to do a Volksmarch today. The board meeting got cancelled. My condo is grateful for the attention.

Commuting: I've had a few annoying metro moments lately, suitable for haiku. Let's start with Friday's fun at Crystal City:

This morning, doors would
not open because the train
overshot platform.

I had been on time, but that extra stop to the airport and trip back made me late. I'd also had that extra stop earlier the week but had nobody but myself to blame:

It is bad enough
when I'm absorbed in reading
and miss my station.

Which is why it is a good thing I live at the end of the line. Except when the worst fellow passenger ever is also going to Vienna:

He took up four seats
then lit up a cigarette -
also needed bath.

Game theory: The Prisoner's Dilemma (a classic problem in game theory) came up at a meeting I was at on Thursday. It gave me an opportunity to point out that neither approach to it (both of which are valid) is entirely satisfying. Pareto died in exile and Nash spent much of his adult life hospitalized for schizophrenia.

Work comment of the week: One of my colleagues referred to a meeting as having been held in "one of those big sleeper conference rooms."

Disease trivia of the week: Armadillos can transmit leprosy to humans. I never did trust animals that think they need armor.

Books purchased: I took advantage of being at Dupont Circle on Friday night to do some book shopping. I found a book of Yiddish folk tales at Second Story Books (which is mostly a used book place). And I bought John Pollack's The Pun Also Rises at Kramerbooks, as well as Old Jews Telling Jokes which will make a reasonable Mother's Day present.

Theatre: The reason I was at Dupont Circle was to see National Pastime at the Keegan Theatre. This was advertised as a musical about a fictional baseball team, which is right up my alley. The show was reasonably entertaining, but nothing brilliant. The plot, such as it is, involves a struggling radio station in Iowa in 1933 which tries to save itself by making up a baseball team, whose games (in Europe to keep anybody from trying to go to them) they will have exclusive rights to broadcast. It works fine - until a reporter from Life Magazine wanders by. There are a couple of love stories woven in. One involves the person behind the scheme (the owner's daughter who happens to be a big shot lawyer from Chicago) and the station manager. The other involves the primary baseball reporter and the woman who does traffic reports and such. He doesn't act on anything until one of the thugs, hired to pretend to be a ball player and do on-air interviews, makes a move on her. Then he takes revenge by killing that player in the next game.

A lot of the humor comes about because the two guys doing the broadcasts don't know anything about baseball. So, for example, they don't understand the symbols for the positions when they cover the first game and say things like say things like x is at C and y is P-ing on the mound. And they take it too literally when the station manager throws a suicide squeeze into the script later on.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of little things that are distracting. It's hard enough to believe two adult American men in 1933 are that ignorant about baseball. It's even harder to believe that a woman lawyer would be able to run everything in that era. (And, really, to have her wearing a pants suit in much of Act 1? No.) There are plenty of anachronisms and errors. The team schedule, for example, makes no sense in that era of limited air travel. A radio station in Iowa (which is west of the Mississippi) could not be named WZBQ. And the flags everyone waves in a scene about how great being an American is were current ones, with too many stars. These are nits, but all of this could have been solved with competent editing. Just because it's a musical doesn't mean you don't have to do your homework.

I should have mentioned that somebody developed a playlist of songs from our undergrad days to play at our class dinners at the reunion. The only song on that playlist I remember hearing multiple times is "We Will Rock You." I probably noticed it because it is my least favorite song of all time.

Anyway, I did promise to post my haiku entries from the Tech Challenge Games. Two of the topics (the MIT Energy Initiative and Ray Stata / The Stata Center) did nothing for me. My try at the Large Hadron Collider was pretty feeble:

Will it create a
black hole and destroy the earth?
First, get it running.

On the topic of Obama at MIT, I came up with:

Hope and change? Now the
President knows which Cambridge
school he should go to!

But the really inspiring topic was the iPad. The first of these is weak, but I'm pleased with the other two:

The main thing Apple
padded is not the features
or apps. It's the price.

The Mafia is
using ipads to plan hits
The real killer app.

Apple is going
to make a larger version -
the i-maxipad

I was able to get back to my more normal haiku topic during the week, alas:

Reported smoke at
Federal Center Southwest
No trains are stopping

And Amtrak offered up a surprise, too:

The quiet car is
actually quiet on
Thursday afternoon

Just because I haven't done this in a while and I am in the need of a wee bit of creativity.

Electronics are
being stolen on metro -
Don't use them near doors.

That is the advice on a poster about thefts of cell phones and music players and the like. One has to wonder if the person who wrote that advice has ever actually taken a metro train at rush hour.

There will be no trains
between East and West Falls Church
the next three weekends.

This is related to construction work for the metro extension towards Dulles. ("Towards" not "to" since they have only funded the first phase, through Tyson's to Reston.) They will have shuttle bus service, but it is still a pain. I will probably just drive to Wolf Trap (for A Prairie Home Companion) tomorrow night but I need to go into the city Monday evening (which will still be without service since holidays count as weekends on the metro). I may decide it is easiest to drive to East Falls Church.

Fares will be rising.
Adding "peak of the peak" fares
makes driving cheaper.

There's the catch-22 of fare increases. When you make it too pricy, people drive instead, so metro ends up with even more shortfalls.

The Travel & Adventure show was today (and continues tomorrow) at the Convention Center. It's potentially dangerous to my budget, but it is a usually a good source of information. However, this year's offerings were fairly thin. There was some good information and I collected brochures on Ethiopia (since I am contemplating the Omo Valley) and on some West African festivals (as I have wanted to go to the Festival in the Desert for quite a while), as well as a few other things. But there were far fewer exhibitors than usual. And, for some mysterious reason, the travel show was combined with some sort of real estate show. I can understand the people selling vacation homes, but I really don't grasp why the gutter cover people were there. Or the Mahatma rice people, for that matter. I ran into a friend who also complained about the reduced size of the show. Very disappointing.

On the cultural side, Kajal (the woman who teaches my Bollywood dance workout class) was there. I missed her group's performance, however, since the metro had been troublesome. Or to put it in my more normal metro complaint medium:

I don't understand
why they can't offload just the
car with broken door.

Not that that would really have helped since it was the car I was in that had the door which wouldn't close at Clarendon, but still ...

1) I am intrigued by what news stories do and don't get major headlines. I'm surprised the Stewart Nozette case isn't getting more news. He is a former NASA scientist, who tried to sell classified data to Israel. Except it was the FBI and not the Mossad who contacted him. I don't think this will be another Pollard case, though, since it seems Nozette was seeking money, while Pollard acted on ideological grounds. (I also think that's why the parts of the Jewish community who think Pollard got too heavy a sentence are wrong, but that's a separate subject.)

2) Tuesday was the last day of the Crystal City farmer's market. It's been very convenient having it right outside my office and I'll be happy when it starts up again in the spring. In the meantime, I stocked up on Stayman apples.

3) Somebody is turning "The Man WHo Mistook His Wife for a Hat" into an opera. Just as I believe that mental illness is not a good subject for musical comedy, neurology does not seem like promising material for opera.

4) My list of things to write about here includes the word "exposure," but I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. In case I happen to ask about the string of numbers on the next page of my planner at some time in the future, it was a document number and Andy's fax number for me to send it to.

5) I managed to save myself about $130 on a trip to San Francisco in December by buying the ticket at exactly the right time. I love it when I get the last seat at the discounted price.

6) The metro had a little service challenge yesterday morning:

Amtrak fire at New
Carrollton this morning screwed
up the Orange Line

and then there is the usual behavior of fellow riders to write haiku about:

Someone should offer
a seat to the woman who's
holding a baby

(If I'd had a seat, I'd have offered it to her, of course.)

7) Go Phillies! (I am blaming last night on Pedro having had a cold.)

8) I vaguely remember putting my cell phone down somewhere when I came home on Sunday evening. And I remember thinking that wherever I put it was a bad idea because I would have trouble finding it again. Sure enough, I have no seen it since. If it doesn't turn up by the end of the weekend, I'll call to get it replaced.

9) An interesting tidbit from the new issue of Technology Review - in 45 BCE, Julius Caesar banned private vehicles from the center of Rome during daytime hours to try to reduce congestion.

10) This song is stuck in my head from my Bollywood dance class Wednesday night, so I thought I'd try to inflict the earworm on others. Unfortunately, it's the steps to an entirely different dance that are stuck in my head with it. (The choreography we did to it is not the same as the movie clip.) If you are wondering why there are so many blondes in a Bollywood movie, the film is apparently set in Miami.

In the course of doing a wee bit of desk unshoveling, I stumbled across some metro haikus I never posted here. These go back to June, but are really pretty timeless for us weary commuters.

Waited twenty-three
minutes for train whih should
run every five. Damn!

The indoor voice is
apparently not taught to
children nowadays.

I also have the obligatory cryptic notes to myself. Surprisingly, I recognized a sequence of digits written on one scrap of paper as a frequent flyer number. I can more or less figure out what I meant by things like 24-28 and 1-5 for Festival, and I actually just realized that it was the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I am reasonably sure I know what I was supposed to tell Vic and I think I actually did tell him. But I have absolutely no idea who Ben Regngert might be and why he is associated with 19 x 19 foam board.