Fans, books and plays; or, a weekend in New York
Just back from a weekend in NY to visit my dad for Father's Day. Thanks to a happy coincidence of travel along with a little coordination, I was able to meet mer_duff too! She is totally lovely and fun, and aside from the blinding peek-a-boo sun and occasional surreality of having a conversation with the author of so many of the best House fics out there, whom I'd known online for 5 years but never met, while eating burritos, it was a fabulous afternoon.
We were able to catch a matinee of The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer's drama about the frustrations and disagreements tearing at the NYC gay and medical communities as AIDS emerged in the early '80s, as seen through the lens of one activist's experience. A deserving winner of three Tonys for best revival of a play and best featured actor and actress (though strangely not for an excellent Joe Mantello, who the Playbill says came out of acting-retirement to play this role).
Ellen Barkin's monologue has gotten a lot of press and explosive ovations, but two other ones stood out for me in particular: a tear-jerker delivered by Lee Pace (any Pushing Daisies fans around?) and one by I think Patrick Breen that neatly and passionately conveyed the conflict between gay men's hard-won right for free love and the new pressure to abstain from physical intimacy entirely until the cause of the deaths could be found.
Solid performances all around, with some of the topics happily dated but too many others still potent.
*
Turns out D.C. isn't a total failure when it comes to theater. alpheratz and ellen_fremedon and I will be going to see Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving (!) in Uncle Vanya this summer. Very excited. There is also a run of Venus in Fur this month that I forgot about until this morning. Hm.
*
I brought Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth to read on the train. The beginning was all right, but he lost me somewhere in the Methuseleh diaries,* and the second half of the book didn't hold my interest. His essay lambasting James Fenimore Cooper's wasteful writing "style" cracked me up, though. Footnote says I need to check out How to Tell a Story.
*Biblical characters describing a baseball game: not really funny in the execution, for some reason, but maybe remarkable if it was among the first published examples of that kind of premise, in the same way you're supposed to appreciate Citizen Kane even though it's no longer thrilling because everyone has copied it? Not sure.
For the ride back, I picked up a book of essays by John McPhee because I should know more of what he's written. The first, titular one, "Silk Parachute," was short and eh, so I got worried, but then there were longer pieces about Cretaceous chalk and lacrosse (separately), and, seriously, putting those together with one I'd read a few years ago about roadkill in Georgia, I can concur with everyone who says that McPhee has a singular talent for making you want to know all about whatever he's set his sights on even if you had zero interest in it before. Plus the enviable New Yorker staff writer skill of making a 4,000-word article breeze right on through to the end.
*
Bend It is complete at 28,000 words, and praise can now be directed to a de-anoned butterflythread. I want to talk about it, but if I get started right now I will end up with a TMI meta about virginity fic, so I think I should just go write a TMI meta about virginity fic.
We were able to catch a matinee of The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer's drama about the frustrations and disagreements tearing at the NYC gay and medical communities as AIDS emerged in the early '80s, as seen through the lens of one activist's experience. A deserving winner of three Tonys for best revival of a play and best featured actor and actress (though strangely not for an excellent Joe Mantello, who the Playbill says came out of acting-retirement to play this role).
Ellen Barkin's monologue has gotten a lot of press and explosive ovations, but two other ones stood out for me in particular: a tear-jerker delivered by Lee Pace (any Pushing Daisies fans around?) and one by I think Patrick Breen that neatly and passionately conveyed the conflict between gay men's hard-won right for free love and the new pressure to abstain from physical intimacy entirely until the cause of the deaths could be found.
Solid performances all around, with some of the topics happily dated but too many others still potent.
*
Turns out D.C. isn't a total failure when it comes to theater. alpheratz and ellen_fremedon and I will be going to see Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving (!) in Uncle Vanya this summer. Very excited. There is also a run of Venus in Fur this month that I forgot about until this morning. Hm.
*
I brought Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth to read on the train. The beginning was all right, but he lost me somewhere in the Methuseleh diaries,* and the second half of the book didn't hold my interest. His essay lambasting James Fenimore Cooper's wasteful writing "style" cracked me up, though. Footnote says I need to check out How to Tell a Story.
*Biblical characters describing a baseball game: not really funny in the execution, for some reason, but maybe remarkable if it was among the first published examples of that kind of premise, in the same way you're supposed to appreciate Citizen Kane even though it's no longer thrilling because everyone has copied it? Not sure.
For the ride back, I picked up a book of essays by John McPhee because I should know more of what he's written. The first, titular one, "Silk Parachute," was short and eh, so I got worried, but then there were longer pieces about Cretaceous chalk and lacrosse (separately), and, seriously, putting those together with one I'd read a few years ago about roadkill in Georgia, I can concur with everyone who says that McPhee has a singular talent for making you want to know all about whatever he's set his sights on even if you had zero interest in it before. Plus the enviable New Yorker staff writer skill of making a 4,000-word article breeze right on through to the end.
*
Bend It is complete at 28,000 words, and praise can now be directed to a de-anoned butterflythread. I want to talk about it, but if I get started right now I will end up with a TMI meta about virginity fic, so I think I should just go write a TMI meta about virginity fic.