Guilty Pleasures

Somebody started one of those ridiculous threads on Facebook, and naturally, I couldn't resist.  This time, it was, "You are the main character in the last book you read.  Your name is..."

To my utter mortification, I was forced to confess that "My name is Don Vito Corleone."

I know.  I know. What can I say? It's been a stressful week.  First Breaking Bad...now The Godfather.  Somebody stop me, before I start referring to Snooki as the Dorothy Parker of the 21st century.

But here's the thing.  A lifetime of reading, in combination with a lifetime of ups and downs, has convinced me that sometimes, you need to read for escape.  There are days, weeks, and yes, sometimes even months, when it is just...All...Too...Freakin'...Much.  And that's when we turn to our Guilty Pleasures.

When was the first time I read for escape?  Hard to say.  I think it may have been in my first grade classroom.  It was back in the days of the deadly dull Dick and Jane primers, but a few story books were lined up along the classroom wall, just in case the teacher (a hardbitten old dame, who obviously loathed her job, not to mention all children) ever felt our behavior merited the reward of Story Hour.  To the best of my recollection, this never happened.  But by the end of the school year,I had mastered the art of reading enough to pick up some of the books I was not expected to be able to read yet and laboriously spell my way through them, always enticed along to the next page by the compulsion to find out what happened next in the Olive Fairy Book.

I do recall having the chicken pox in fourth grade and whiling away my convalescence by getting all the way up to the part where Scarlett O'Hara is throwing up that radish and vowing that she'll never be hungry again; at this point, the idea of eating a dirty radish and puking it back up turned me queasy, and I had to put that book down for a while.  I remember liking the descriptions of Scarlett's party dresses in the early chapters, thinking that Melanie was kind of a simp and deserved to have Ashley taken away from her, and that Rhett Butler, since he had a mustache, was just too old.

Most people have some sort of innocuous never-fail remedy to turn to when it's All Too Freakin' Much.  Some of us go for a tuna melt and a black & white shake.  Some go on eBay and buy another yet designer handbag we don't need.  Some of us pick up the phone and call all our friends to see if anybody else is overburdened and overwhelmed, and to confirm to ourselves that nobody else is quite as overburdened and overwhelmed as we are. (Anybody who produces a life emergency that is more drastic than our own is considered a very poor sport and doesn't get called a second time.)  A few annoying ones - beg pardon, I mean, healthy ones - hit the gym or unroll yoga mats.  And then, there are the chronic and incurable readers.  When the heat is on, we go on Brain Vacations...and that's when the Guilty Pleasures come out.

A short list of my Never Fail Comfort Food for the Brain is (as they say in legalese, including, but not limited to):

- Anything by Betty MacDonald.  Best known today for her children's series about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, the little woman who lives in an upside-down house and has an unending supply of amusing magical remedies to cure children of their faults (I find myself, on occasion, wishing I had a vial of Interrupter Powder that I could blow onto unwary family members and watch their mouths snap soundlessly open and shut like so many goldfish when they try to jump in and beat me to the punchlines when I am regaling dinner guests with my best stories), Betty MacDonald scored a surprise bestseller with her wittily woeful tales of Life on a Backwoods Washington State Chicken Farm in The Egg and I.  She makes it all sound pretty sprightly, including chicken droppings, an unexpected visit from an escapee from the local asylum that sends her reaching for the poker (instead of for the rifle her husband has taught her to use in case of emergencies, such as a lunatic trying to climb through your window when you're home alone and you live 5 miles away from anybody, anywhere), and the shenanigans of Ma and Pa Kettle, who live on the next farm and never pay for anything they can borrow from a neighbor.  Still, it comes as no real surprise to the reader that in her next book, MacDonald has scurried back down off the mountain, gotten a divorce and found an office job in Seattle.

- Anything by Florence King.  I first discovered her by reading Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, a very funny, very bawdy memoir that reads like a novel.  Since all of the people in it are gloriously loopy (there is a hypochondriacal Cousin Evelyn who, convinced that "My womb is falling out!" goes into a squat on the boardwalk and tries to catch it in a pickle jar) and since the author, a child of the Fifties, discovers that it is perfectly all right for a gently-bred Southern lady to bed down with partners of both sexes, as long as she never acts trashy by smoking a cigarette in the street, it took a while before I found out that - O, horror! - when she is not writing fondly about her nutty family, King is a conservative gun-nut of the stripe that makes Charlton Heston look like Brigitte Bardot.  By that time, I was hooked on her sheer elegance as an erudite and scholarly prose writer who is also funny as hell, so now I read the good stuff and merely flip past anything relating to politics with a shudder.  Florence King on the subject of Lizzie Borden is - well, words fail me, but I read it whenever I really need something to get me snorting with glee.  It's all sardonically splendid, but the kicker is the explanation that WASP-y little Victoria Lincoln, a Falls River native who grew up to become Lizzie Borden's biographer, was given by her parents when she asked why they were not on speaking terms with their neighbor, Miss Lizzie:

"Well, dear...she was very unkind to her parents."

- Forever Amber.  The extravagant costumes!  The bitchiness!  The indiscriminate sex-for-material-gain!  Is it New York in 2014?  No, it's Restoration London, complete with the Great Fire, Newgate Prison, and the Bubonic Plague!  And there is always that great imponderable to ponder - which fictional spitfire is the more morally abandoned - Scarlett, or Amber?

- The Godfather.  So, how many of you knew it was a book before it was a movie? Be honest!  Read the book, and you'll find out why The Godfather, Part III was such a stinker.  It's because the novel was too long to make into a single movie, so Part I and Part II are pure Mario Puzo, but God only knows where they came up with the tripe that they put in Part III.  Puzo may be a hack, but he's a gifted hack.  He knows how to tell a story, and his techniques of interspersing action with exposition and flashback are actually quite sophisticated.  And speaking of gifted hacks, you know who else I like?  I like

- James Cain.  Most of James Cain, anyway.  Mildred Pierce.  Serenade.  The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Double Indemnity.  All right - I've tried three times, and for some reason, I've never made it all the way through Love's Lovely Counterfeit.  I still don't understand what it is that makes that one so different from the rest of them.  Maybe it's that Cain doesn't bring on the femme fatale fast enough.  Incidentally - did you know that Caine was an aspiring opera singer in his youth, and that's why opera singers appear so often in his books?

One of the finest passages in Mildred Pierce didn't make it into the movie, because Hollywood decided that portraying Vida Pierce as a ruthlessly ambitious opera singer was needlessly complicated, when all they really had to do was make her man-crazy for her mother Mildred's rich boyfriend.  But in the novel, the vocal instructor Mr. Treviso, who, thanks to Vida's immense musical talent, takes her on as a pupil  despite her loathsome personality, gives her long-suffering mother this pithy explanation of What Makes Vida  (Such a) Tick (reproduced here with the original phonetic spelling):

(Your daughter Vida) is snake...No, is coloratura, is much worse...Coloratura soprano love nobody but own goddamn self.  Is son-bitch-bast', worse than all a snake in a world. Madame, you leave dees girl alone...Madame, is special fancy breed, like blue Persian cat.  Come once in a lifetime, sing all a trill, a staccato ha-ha-ha, a cadenza, tough stuff...All coloratura crazy for rich pipple, all take no give, all twiddle a la valiere, all same, every one.  All borrow ten t'ousand bucks, go to Italy, study voice, never pay back a money, t'ink was all friendship.  Sing in grand opera, marry a banker, get da money.  Got da money, kick out a banker, marry a baron, get da title. 'Ave a sweetie on a side, guy she like to sleep wit'.  Den all travel together, all over Europe, grand opera to grand opera, 'otel to 'otel - a baron, 'e travel in Compartment C, take care of dog.  A banker, 'e travel in Compartment B, take care of luggage.  A sweetie, 'e travel in Compartment A, take care of coloratura - all one big 'appy family. 

James Cain likes to write about sleazy people, their greed, and their sexual obsessions.  And I like to read about 'em.

What the Doctor Ordered: The Poetry Panacea

Saturday, April 26th.  I am at the Casablanca Hotel, Forty-Third Street just off Broadway, waiting to conduct a poetry workshop with two of the guests.

You'd think I would be far from being in a poetic state of mind.  The last 24 hours of my private life have been turbulent, to put it mildly.  My husband spent yesterday driving to Woodstock to investigate a long-term care facility for a family member; on the way, he stopped at our new house to see how things were coming along, and found out that the contractor had run out of bathroom tile.  As a result, my husband had to get up very early to go fetch some more tiles today and deliver them to our new home.

I was up early, too, because I'd spent the night compulsively running in and out of my eighteen year old son's room to make sure he was still breathing.  My husband kept shaking his head at me deprecatingly and saying, "You know you're crazy, right?  He's perfectly fine."  And I kept acknowledging that yes, I probably was crazy, but on the other hand Caleb had just had all four of his impacted wisdom teeth taken out and was lying there looking pretty ghastly, so better safe than sorry, and anyway, you had to be a Mom to understand.

Perhaps it was this Nervous Mom thing that prompted me not to watch where I was going yesterday.  I'd been hurrying back from the pharmacy with Caleb's prescriptions, tried to leap up the front stoop of my building, and came down hard, with a resounding crash, on both of my middle-aged knees.  My husband returned from his Woodstock trip at six o'clock to find each of us - Caleb and me - lying on our separate beds, with ice bags stuffed around the bruised and swollen parts. Of this sorry pair of Instant Invalids, my son was by far the more stoical - I was the one who was crying.

Luckily, I am better today, and am once again able to walk without the dragging gait of Charles Laughton chanting "Esmeralda!" as he limps up the bell tower of Notre Dame.  Which is good, because I am conducting this poetry writing workshop for two, and I do not want to scare the other poets.

The "Poetry for Two" package at the Library/Casablanca/Hotel Elysée /Hotel Giraffe allows guests to spend an hour and a half familiarizing themselves with various poetic forms in a short tutorial session with me, after which they write a poem - or two, if they wish - in a guided writing workshop.  It can be a romantic occasion for writing love poems to one another - indeed, one gentleman, as you may recall from one of my earlier posts, capped the poetry writing session with a proposal to the lady of his heart, and was graciously accepted by her.

Today, I am a little nervous.  I have learned from the hotel staff that the gentleman I'm about to meet is an English teacher.  Moreover, he bears the name of one of the most illustrious poets of nineteenth century British literature - an instantly quotable writer whose words have thrilled me since I first encountered him in college.  What if he knows a whole lot more about writing poetry than I do?

It turns out I needn't have worried.  Like most of the poetry-loving people I have ever met, this couple is delightful.  People who like to write poetry almost always are. (Unless there's a literary agent in the room - then it turns into Black Friday at Walmart's.)  Another thing about people who enjoy reading and writing poetry - they like to bat around ideas and get playful with words.  And - poetry people are curious to expand on what they already know and explore new concepts.  This couple is no exception.

They are quite taken with the idea of writing a love poem - only, their love poem is going to have a twist.  They are going to write a love poem to their young daughters, ages 6 and 11, who are now at home being babysat by Grandma while their parents have a weekend in New York.  What a great idea!

We rifle through a few pages of notes I've brought along - some prompts about poetic forms and devices, designed to get our creative juices flowing.  It's a funny thing - I have seen it time and time again, and observed it in myself, as well.  You can be sitting there, trying to write a poem, and drawing a blank. Then you flip through a few pages of unfamiliar forms - things you've never tried - and something strikes a spark.  Perhaps an acrostic?  Or a, Italian sonnet?   We briefly consider trying our hand at a ghazal -a kind of verse rooted in ancient Arabian poetry, in which there is a series of couplets, with a refrain phrase at the end of each couplet, preceded by a word that rhymes with the word that comes before the refrain in the couplet above it.  Interesting...but not quite the thing.  Perhaps something to keep in mind to try with the eighth graders he teaches back at home?  We keep looking.  Suddenly, it jumps off the page, and it is she who puts a decisive finger down on the paper, saying, "Oh, I really like that one!  Why don't we try it?  I'll bet the girls will love it!"

Shaped Poetry (Carmina Figurata):
This is simply a fun way of conveying the intention of the poem by making its shape on the page visually resemble what the poem is about.  The example I have selected is:

Swan and Shadow (John Hollander)

                                Dusk
                           Above the
                    water hang the
                                  loud
                                flies
                              Here
                            O so
                           gray
                          then
                         What             A pale signal will appear
                        When         Soon before its shadow fades
                       Where       Here in this pool of opened eye
                       In us     No Upon us As at the very edges
                        of where we take shape in the dark air
                         this object bares its image awakening
                           ripples of recognition that will
                              brush darkness up into light
even after this bird this hour both drift by atop the perfect sad instant now
                              already passing out of sight
                           toward yet-untroubled reflection
                         this image bears its object darkening
                        into memorial shades Scattered bits of
                       light     No of water Or something across
                       water       Breaking up No Being regathered
                        soon         Yet by then a swan will have
                         gone             Yes out of mind into what
                          vast
                           pale
                             hush
                                of a
                                place
                                   past
                    sudden dark as
                            if a swan
                                sang

We catch fire immediately.  First - what shall the poem look like?  Something that will be meaningful to the children...something not too hard to shape on the page...something instantly recognizable.  Aha!  The camper the family just bought, in which they have already taken their maiden voyage!  And, just for fun - let's take the letters of the names of each of the two daughters, and form those into circles - their names will be the wheels.  After all - it's the girls who make these trips go!  Mom and Dad?  They are the hitch-knob that connects the camper to the car.

With the roar of an imaginary engine, we are off. We scribble on a writing tablet...cross things out...add things in...change a two-syllable word into a one-syllable word, because it sounds better that way... substitute "windy" for "breezy," because "breezy" isn't cold enough, and we want to convey how nice it feels to be warm and snuggly inside the camper with your family, even when that early-Spring trip feels more like a mid-Winter dash across the Yukon.

When we are done, we type it all up on the laptop, spacing the words on the page to look like a camper.  By the time we are finished, we have had a great deal of fun, have a completely unusual gift for the girls that bears no resemblance whatsoever to a souvenir T-shirt, and have given John Hollander a run for his money.

I get home, still smiling as I put my key in the door, to find that my son is sitting up, able eat applesauce and pudding, and my husband is already home from his tile-delivery errand, telling me that the new bathrooms are looking splendid.

Ah, the healing powers of poetry!

Roald Dahl on Put a Poem In Your Pocket Day

It's "Put a Poem In Your Pocket Day"! You know what I forgot to say yesterday, speaking of television?

"Mike Teavee..."

(from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl)

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set–
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all the shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink–
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK–HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY...USED...TO...READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic takes
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy–Winkle and–
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How The Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole–
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks–
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.
And once they start–oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hears. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

Breaking Badly

I know many of my Gentle Readers will be shocked to hear this, but - I have a confession.

I don't watch television.

Nine years ago, I got divorced.  As an undisputed item in the HIS column of the Marital Assets, I handed my ex the connubial television set with a sigh of utter relief.  Didn't even want to contest it.  You see, the ex was one of those people who had to have the television on at all times.  Otherwise, he got lonely.  I spent close to twenty years honing my skill at tuning out the background noise that was the TV, which was only turned off if he went to bed instead of falling asleep in front of it.  Most of the time, it stayed on.

Gentle Reader! Do you have any idea what it's like to sit in the parlor, trying to read:

Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe; I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

while somebody in the next room is screaming, "You're out! You're out!  Motherf**ker, you're out!" at shadowy screen images of the Yankees?

So it was with a giddy sense of liberation that I decided not to have a television anymore.

The man I subsequently married (my present husband, or shall I say, my current husband - neither description is really satisfactory, as both adjectives seem to imply a temporary state of affairs that I am far from wishing to impute to our condition of Actively Wedded Bliss) is emphatically on the same page as myself when it comes to Ban the TV.  In fact, he claims that the decisive moment that set the "Now, this is the girl for me!" alarm bells to jangling in his head came on the day we went shopping to furnish the apartment we were planning to share, and he pointed to a television set the size of the Ziegfeld's Cinemax screen and tenderly inquired as to whether I'd like to acquire it, only to be met with an eye-roll, a moue, and a muttered, "Do we even have to have a TV?  I mean...I know most people do, but...couldn't we just put in a couple of extra bookcases and call it a day?"

Gentle Reader...he married me.

Of course, since I came fully equipped with a ten year old son from my first marriage - a son who, let's not forget, had been raised on television - and since I am sort of a pushover when it comes to my kid, we did eventually get a television set, which we put in my son's room with strict orders that we never wanted to hear the thing blaring.  We didn't, however, get cable, which meant we had no TV reception.  Instead, my son was allowed unlimited Netflix, and on these he eked out a miserable, media-deprived existence until the poor, fierce-eyed child saved up enough Christmas and birthday money from various relatives to buy his own Xbox - which happened, as I recall, by the time he was eleven.

Of course, I am not completely unaware that I have been missing some seriously good television in the last nine years.  When everybody on Facebook was talking about Downton Abbey, I was genuinely tempted.  A costume drama... Now, there was a thing!  And all of the actors talking in those rich, plummy British accents that I remembered so fondly from my own teenage Masterpiece Theatre  years!

Predictably, it was the Son and Heir who finally got me to crack and watch a television show for the first time in all these years. (Those re-run episodes of Supernatural that I used to watch while pedaling away on the exercise bike at the Paris Health Club, like those broken bits of cookie coaxed out the bottom of the bag on the end of a well-licked forefinger, do not count.)  The Scion of My Domain is on spring break this week, and most of his friends are not.  He was moping about, looking forlorn, and I offered to "do something together."  While he is too well-mannered to actually give a Bronx cheer, he looked one, before he caught himself and said, "Well, that's nice of you, but what could we do? I mean, together?"

Maternal love knows no bounds; I took a deep breath and ventured, "We could....we could watch something on TV together."

At this, his eyebrows rocketed nearly to the top of his head, and his voice took on a strained quality.  "Like what?"

I knew better than to say, "Downton Abbey," because, as my son would say, "That'd be a game-ender."  So I blushingly brought forth, "Well...I've heard a lot about Breaking Bad.  A lot of people say it's pretty good."

His face took on a reverent glow.  "That show is amazing."  Then he shook his head and added accusingly, "But you wouldn't like it."

"Maybe I would," I argued.  "Look, let's watch the first episode together."

He kept shaking his head.  "Nah.  You'd just bag on it, the way you bag on everything that's good."

This stung me to the quick.  "Come on.  Right now - let's watch it. I won't snap on it, I swear!"

He looked at me doubtfully, then grinned and shrugged.  "All right."

Of course, it was good.  Of course, I liked it.  Of course, my son couldn't believe that I would get into the adventures of a mild-mannered middle-aged pedant who,clad in nothing but an apron and a pair of tighty whities, kicks over the traces and decides to set up a meth lab.  In vain did I try to explain to my son that it's bad writing I object to, not controversial subject matter.  There is an awful lot of garbage on TV, and that's just a fact.  For that matter, there is an awful lot of garbage in the movie theaters, on the stages, and, for that matter, on the bookstore shelves.  The trick is rummaging past all the garbage to find the gems.  And they do exist - I'll be the first to admit it.

My son has an appointment with the oral surgeon to have all four of his wisdom teeth pulled this Friday.  He is not, to put it mildly, at all pleased at the prospect of "wasting perfectly good vacation days on oral surgery when I could be getting out of school!"  I promised to help him get through the ordeal by 1. Stocking the freezer with sorbet and 2. Watching back-to-back episodes of Breaking Bad with him.

"You know," I said thoughtfully, as I evicted the dog, who had spent the last hour lying on top of my foot and watching the antics of the mobile meth lab with us, "the really dark humor reminds me a little of one of the few shows I used to watch, back when I still had a TV.  Have you ever watched Six Feet Under?"

My son shook his head.  "Nah.  Funny undertakers? I don't see it."

"Look," I said.  "How about if we watch a bunch of Breaking Bad, and then when we're tired of it, we can check out Six Feet Under, and if you hate it, we don't have to watch it.  Whaddaya say? Please?"

So that's the plan, and, while I naturally wish it didn't involve oral surgery and blood-soaked gauze pads and endless containers of yogurt, I must confess, I can hardly wait for Friday afternoon so I can find out what happens next in the life of the Caspar Milquetoast of Meth.  Of course, we'll have to turn it off and chuck the remote under the bed as soon as we hear my husband's key in the front door.

I Strive After Serenity, With Mixed Results

This confession will probably disqualify me as a New Yorker of a Certain Age, but - I seem to have made it past the half-century mark without ever having taken a yoga class.  That's right.  Not one. At long last, a tempting offer from Groupon finally broke through the sturdy resistance to any form of healthy activity that has carried me unscathed through the Barnard gym requirement (I took the Phys Ed edition of a gut course - something called Relaxation - twice), a gym membership that had free classes (the only class I took was belly dancing, and I spent the rest of my of time sitting on the exercise bicycle watching re-runs of Supernatural and laughing my head off).  But Groupon finally got to me, with a very cheap deal on Incredibly Introductory Yoga for Total Beginners Who Are Completely Out of Shape, in a facility that is literally across the street from my apartment.  In short - the Well of Excuses finally ran dry.

After a number of alarums and excursions, in which I repeatedly called the facility to find out when the classes were being held, how long each session was, whether or not the instructor was a meanie who would think I ought to be hooking my left ankle behind my neck immediately, and who would shame me publicly if I didn't get it on the first try, and whether or not I had to own a yoga mat (I didn't - they rent them to you for a buck, which is so cheap that even I couldn't quibble that first they rope you in with the cheap classes on Groupon and then they soak you for the yoga mat rentals) I finally got there this afternoon.  I was going to go last week, but due to an unfortunate incident in the bathroom, in which I somehow caught my left pinky toe on a short wall that buttresses the end of my bathtub, and the toe went in one direction while my foot kept going another, I wound up at the Urgent Care last Tuesday, rather than at the yoga studio.  The top of my foot is still an interesting shade of blue, but at least nothing is broken.  The toe in question still looks like a plumped-up cocktail frank, but the swelling is slowly subsiding.

Now, first of all, I have to say that everybody was very, very nice, and most especially so the instructor, who, upon hearing that I had never done yoga before, put me off to the side near the wall, so that I could cheat and prop myself up against it while more agile people were doing those crazy things where they stand on their shoulders with their feet sticking straight up in the air.  I'd also murmured with a blush that I had suffered a foot injury, as if it were not quite a nice thing for a lady of my years to confess, and she gave me an understanding wink and told me to just follow along as best I could.

The class was an hour and a half long.  I have not sat cross-legged on the floor since elementary school, so right away, I was uncomfortable.  I kept shooting surreptitious glances at all the serene people sitting in the classic Buddha pose with their legs crossed and their feet resting on their thighs and their palms turned up, looking like they were pinching a flower stalk between their fingers.  They all looked transcendent.  I was wretchedly aware that I merely looked like I couldn't find any way to sit that didn't make something hurt after thirty seconds.

Within ten minutes of the actual inception of the class, I had a mantra reverberating through my head.  My mantra, unfortunately, was: THIS SUCKS THIS SUCKS THIS SUCKS THIS SUCKS.  I was absolutely convinced that I would never, no, never want to do this again.  I kept trying to see the clock and find out how much longer this torture was going to last, but I was upside down with my hair hanging in my eyes, which made it difficult.

The thing is, after a while it got a little better.  I wouldn't say that I ever attained the state of tranquil bliss that the instructor kept promising me, but I wasn't flat-out in agony anymore.  Actually, by the time I left, I felt pretty good.  Sort of peckish, as a matter of fact, and wanting to eat something for lunch that wasn't a cheese Danish.  Well - it's about progress, not perfection, right?

So I walked into my front door, feeling all Zen-like and virtuous, they way you do after you've made yourself do physical exercise you're avoided doing for several decades, and what do you think?  My son greeted me with the words, "I hate to tell you, Ma, but I went to the orthodontist like you said for that checkup to make sure my retainer still fits and everything, and my teeth have shifted and she wanted to take X-rays but you were at that yoga class and I have to go back later with another check for, I think she said, like, a hundred and ten dollars, and oh yeah, I might need oral surgery to have all my wisdom teeth out, even though they haven't come in yet."

While I was still reeling from this, the dog came bounding up, slobbering with kisses, and my son added sternly, "Don't let her kiss you,  The toilet didn't quite flush, right before I left, and I didn't notice because I was in a rush, and she fished everything that was in it out and dropped it on the floor.  I cleaned the bathroom, but you should probably brush her teeth.  Here - I'll get the toothbrush."

The dog grinned at me ingratiatingly and then, seeing my horrified expression, slunk away to scuttle under the bed and sulk at the sight of the toothbrush, because she knows what that means.

So if you want to know whether doing yoga contributes to a state of serenity, I am probably the wrong person to ask.

Do You Haiku?

Remember when I got to stay in the Mystery Room at the Library Hotel so that I could earn my title of Poet in Residence by actually residing in the hotel for a night?  It was an evening of literary fabulosity that included a short stroll to the Morgan Library to take in the Edgar Allan Poe exhibition (free admission Friday nights!), dinner at one of those scrumptious little Indian restaurants that have given Madison Avenue in the low Thirties its nickname of "Curry Hill," and a sweet night's slumber on crisp white linens in a king-sized bed, whose pillow, bearing the embroidered legend that Book Lovers Never Sleep Alone, I had prudently preserved from the possibility of unsightly stains by first removing and gobbling up the tasty little chocolates in gold wrappers with erudite literary mottoes on them.

Remember the next morning, with all the free Breakfast Bar yummies, like the fresh fruit salad and the almond croissants and the very impressive espresso machine that looked like something out of Doctor Who, and that charming couple from Brighton at the next table, who invited us to come see them at their country cottage if we ever found ourselves in the U.K.?  And how we meandered over to the main branch of the NY Public Library and took in the enchanting exhibition of children's books - which we knew was on display that day, because we could see the big yellow banner from our big bay window in the Mystery Room?

Well, Gentle Readers...all these delights can be yours.

The Library Hotel is holding its annual Haiku Challenge, and the Grand Prize Winner will be awarded:

- A two night weekend stay in the Poetry Room 800.003. The Poetry Room is 200 sq ft with one full size bed that accommodates up to two guests
- Complimentary continental breakfast buffet, evening wine & cheese reception, Wi-Fi, guest passes to New York Sports Club
- Dinner at Madison & Vine for up to $100 including alcohol and taxes. (Gratuity is excluded and should be based on full amount)
- A copy of How to Read a Poem, by Tania Runyan (based on the poem by Billy Collins)
- A copy of The Best of the Best American Poetry, with Guest Editor Robert Pinsky and Senior Editor David Lehman

You must submit your haiku entry by April 30, 2014, 11:59 p.m.; for the full list of contest regulations, please go to http://www.libraryhotel.com/download/18821

Just in case you are not familiar with the format of haiku composition, here is a general outline for English speakers (and I am putting in the English speakers disclaimer because there is always somebody who quibbles that this isn't how a real Japanese haiku is composed. To which I patiently respond, "Yes, you're very smart," as lovable old Peter Falk said to know-it-all little Fred Savage, before going back to reading aloud from The Princess Bride.)

A haiku written in English is usually composed of three lines. The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables. A traditional Japanese haiku usually has some reference to nature & man's place in nature. There is a kigo, or "season word" that gives the reader a sense of what time of year it is in the poem. Sometimes there is contrast between two images or ideas, and in the Japanese form, there is a kiregi, or "cutting-word" that separates the two. When composing a haiku in English, one can separate two juxtaposed images with punctuation. A haiku conveys the poet's message in a few simple, carefully chosen words.

As you have, no doubt, already said to yourself, "Goodness!  That is a very short format, indeed!  17 syllables in its entirety?  Why, that means that a haiku is probably...Tweetable!"

Yes, Gentle Reader - once again - I congratulate you upon being very smart!  And for this very reason, all you have to do is log onto your account and tweet your 5-7-5 syllable masterpiece to:

https://twitter.com/LibraryHotel

Keep it short, and tweet!

In Tribute to Ella on Her Birthday

It's Wednesday again, and I am feeling such a strange mixture of sorrow and elation that I am hard-put to find the words to express myself.

The elation is easily accounted for.  Today my son Caleb, who has been torn between two equally desirable colleges - a SUNY and a CUNY - that had accepted him, found out that one of his best friends since elementary school has been accepted by the SUNY school and will be going there.  This tipped the scales, and the indecision is at an end.  My kid will be going to the SUNY, and with any luck they can be roommates.  Everyone is overjoyed; indeed, all the parents in the equation are delighted, and not just because state schools are cheaper.  My son's BFF is easily one of the nicest, smartest, kindest, funniest people I know, and he also manages to combine a completely upright moral nature and a desire to do the right thing without ever being priggish or annoying about it.  He's the best friend you'd want your kid to have.

Now that college will definitely be outside of the range of the NYC subway system, my son stopped dragging his feet and went to the DMV at Herald Square with me this afternoon for the Learner's Permit we had been hocking him to get since last summer.  He was just as nervous before taking the written exam as I recall having been when I was his age - it seemed like it would be such a disgrace to fail it, and I'd approached it with the same knot in my gut engendered by the taking of the SAT.  He came out of the testing area with the same look of scornful amazement mingled with triumph and delight I'd experienced, too, and uttered, almost word for word, what I'd said upon passing the test: "I can't believe how easy that was!"

We had plenty of time to get over our delight by the time we were finally called to the window so I could produce the Amex and fork over $90, and then we were on our way, having spent most of the afternoon sitting on the hard wooden benches and staring at the red numbers flashing on the board in no order of any kind that would give us a hint as to when it would be our turn.

So here we are.  Two major milestones reached in a single day.  That's the elation.

The sorrow is more complex.  Today would have been the 25th birthday of Ella Kottick Bandes, daughter of Judy Kottick and Ken Bandes.  Would have been - because Ella was struck and killed by a bus at the age of 23 on the last day of January in 2013.

My own stepdaughter, Brianna, who should also have turned 25 this month, died at the same age as Ella in November of 2012, and we met Ella's parents at a support group for bereaved parents. We met Ella's parents - and so many others.  The parents of Michael...of Jesse...of Shana...of Renee...Ryan, Sammy, Ben, Abby...

I could fill the page with names.  Each child an exquisite, unique and beautiful treasure; irreplaceable in our lives.  A emptiness that can never be filled.

The milestones my son hits are bittersweet to my husband and me.  We remember going through the college application process with Bri.  Every college acceptance that came in for my son this spring made us very happy. We cheered; we congratulated; we boasted on Facebook. And then later, in the quiet of the bedroom, we shed a few tears as we thought of the graduate school years that Bri should have been having now.  Today, I re-lived Bri's nervousness when she went to get her learner's permit, in a small Adirondack town where she'd spent every summer since she was three years old.  And yes - I even smiled, recalling the nervous wreck that was Bri when she walked in to take the written test prancing back out with the same scornful, "I can't believe how easy that was!"

You view life through a different lens after a child in your family has died.  I don't know whether that former, careless state of perfectly happy existence is ever attained again.  There is always a tinge of blue to even the most joyous occasion, because there is always that awareness of somebody essential who should be there - but is not.

Today on her birthday, I am thinking of Ella, who, like Bri, attained all the milestones that Caleb is now starting to achieve.  The college acceptances.  The selection of the school.  The learner's permit.  All those little steps that are actually giant steps on the road toward maturity and independence.

As I sat on the hard benches of the DMV, I had ample time to reflect, and to look around me at the people who were there to get their driver's licenses.  I wondered if any of them were thinking what I was thinking - that they are being given an awesome responsibility when they are handed that license.  That when they get behind that steering wheel, they are literally engaging in an activity that can mean life or death, for themselves and for others as well.  That a moment of poor judgement - glancing at that cell phone to see what your girlfriend just texted, or getting impatient and speeding around another car, without pausing to consider that maybe the reason they've stopped and are blocking your path is that a pedestrian you can't see is in the crosswalk - can mean a lifetime of agony and remorse.  That is, if it doesn't cost you your own life.  And that it is never, no, never your prerogative to endanger others because you decided that you can handle your liquor and anyway, you're sure you drive better after you've had a few drinks.

I hope that none of the people I was looking at will ever have to learn, in the hard way that our family learned, that life is so precious and can vanish in an instant.  As I looked around me, I said a little prayer that the hard, selfless task that Judith Kottick and Ken Bandes have taken on in Ella's memory - lobbying for reduced speed limits and safer streets, with pedestrian rights given priority over vehicular traffic - will bear fruit, and that Vision Zero - No more traffic deaths! - becomes a reality.

Today, on Ella's birthday, please take an extra few moments for her sake and don't blow through that light.  Today, ignore your cell phone's buzz if you are driving, and remember that no message or voicemail could be more important than your responsibility to drive safely and get to where you're going without hurting someone. Today, visit the Families for Safe Streets page on Facebook and give it a "Like."  Today, celebrate Ella by checking off the Organ Donor card on you licence.  More than one person is walking around today, alive, because Ella was chose to be an organ donor.  Other families were directly spared the inconsolable grief of losing a loved one because of Ella's generosity.

I never met Ella while she was here.  I missed out.  I know the wonderful young woman she was, because I have seen her artwork and watched the videos of dances she choreographed.  I have seen the tributes from her friends, who are about to dedicate a permanent installation of her artwork at the college she attended. I hear the stories about the kindnesses she performed, and the funny things she said. I see how dearly she was - and still is - loved by all who know her.  Please help me honor Ella, today and every day, by going through your life with greater gentleness, and with a heightened regard for the fact that the small, simple actions you take can save a life.

Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be...Wonderful

All right, you little devils, stop clamoring and Auntie Karen will tell you all about Day Two of Le Beeg Weekend du Theatre!

Le Beeg Weekend du Theatre kicked off with Friday night in the West Village.  The play was The Mystery of Irma Vep; dinner was at Red Bamboo, a vegan eatery on West Fourth that served food of such excellent quality that I kept stopping in mid-chew, eyeing my carnivore husband suspiciously and demanding "Are you sure this isn't a real hamburger?"  Nope - it was vegan, but it was remarkably - uh - lifelike.

I should probably make it clear, before you start thinking me nobler than I am when it comes to food, that I am not a vegan, being far too fond of good cheeses ever to contemplate giving up dairy products, and my vegetarianism is of the half-assed variety that allows for crustaceans, because lobster tastes good. As my stepdaughter Brianna, who was given to fits-and-starts vegetarianism, once remarked, as she coolly snagged a plump shrimp glistening with garlic butter off her father's plate, "Shrimp don't count - they're stupid."

Our dinner-and-a-play companion was our darling friend Carrie, and I had told her that if she was tired of being dragged into vegetarian restaurants she had but to say so and we would go to anyplace she liked and I'd either find something on the menu that had shrimp in it or have a salad.  Because the fact is, I live in dread that my friends will privately start to roll their eyes and make that awful face when dining out with me is proposed, moaning, "Oh, God, no!  I can't stand another bite of tofu, no matter how cleverly disguised!" But no - darling Carrie was, as always, darling, and so we all had a lovely time together and ate a great deal of tofu, cleverly disguised.

The Mystery of Irma Vep was playing in the West Village - so far West that it was practically in the Hudson - and as we trotted along, I had ample opportunity to see how the rubber-and-leather fetish shops have flourished on Christopher Street since the comparatively moderate days of my youth, when The Pink Pussycat was still the naughtiest game in town.  Somewhat incongruously nestled in between Christopher Street's Maisons du Kink, however, is a little time capsule gem known as McNulty's Tea & Coffee Co. The store claims to have been in business since 1895; looking at the place, I believe it, and I mean that in the best possible way.  Gazing at the tin ceiling, inhaling the aromas of first flush Darjeeling and elderberry teas, and running a reverential finger along the edge of the shiny brass scales, worn to the thinness and luster of gold with years of use, I was transported to the turn-of-the-century Williamsburg emporia described by Betty Smith in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

The joys of Irma Vep I have already described, so let us now turn our attention to Saturday's revels.  After reading a superlative review in the NY Times, I pounced upon a TDF offering of The Heir Apparent (very reasonable at thirty bucks.)  My interest was piqued by several factors, viz:

1. The play is an English adaptation of a seventeenth century Comédie-Française farce, and hence has superlative Nerd Appeal.

2. The adaptation is by David Ives, whose Venus in Fur had made a star of Nina Arianda and left me
gasping with envy and wishing I had written it.  Wit, fireworks, and intellectual frolic were practically guaranteed - and, according to the review, there would be an abundance of Poop Jokes.  Now, it
may be a common taste to enjoy cloacal humor, but I happen to plead guilty to it.

3. The adaptation is in rhymed iambic couplets, with plenty of contemporary allusions thrown in to give it a little extra comic zing.  Well, now - whose Andersen Alterations does that sound like?  I had to go - I was doing Market Research!

I had managed to talk my long-suffering husband into a second day of theater without too much trouble - he'd enjoyed Irma Vep.  But when I made the mistake of mentioning the rhymed couplets, he blanched and began to talk about going to the gym if I could find somebody else to accompany me.  As he waved his hands and looked about wildly for an out, I was strongly reminded of the Enrollment Act of 1863, which allowed well-heeled draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who served in their stead in the Civil War.  Luckily, not everyone I know is a Philistine - pardon me, I meant a  fitness freak - and I was able to secure my friend Suzanne as a Theater Buddy.

Suzanne and I set out in plenty of time to get to East 13th St, but no sooner had our train pulled into the 86th Street station than we heard the crackly message every subway rider in a hurry dreads: "Due to a passenger medical situation at the 79th Street Station, we will be delayed..."  In other words, it was 2:15; we had 45 minutes to get to Thirteenth and Third; and we were screwed.  Either we were going to have to take out a mortgage on a very expensive cab fare, or we would not make the curtain.

And here is where it turns out to pay big dividends when you've quietly gotten yourself another Theater Buddy, instead of hocking your husband for being a Philistine and marching him onto the subway, one arm twisted into a corkscrew behind his back - for my very kind husband responded gallantly to our emergency call for help and appeared in the trusty family Saab in an amazingly short period of time, dropping us at the theater exactly five minutes before curtain - and this in the face of some truly hideous traffic occasioned by the fact that it was the weekend and all of the subways were having track maintenance.

Along the way, we all decided that my husband would go amuse himself for a couple of hours in the East Village and then we would all meet after the play and go to Sheepshead Bay for dinner, now that the car was out of its parking spot anyway. (You have to live in New York City to understand the way most of us guard a legal parking spot the way a mother cougar guards her young.)

As for the play itself? Delectable bit of froth, with everything I love about French farce.  Lots of people in disguise, trying to pull of scams involving sex and money.  An elderly dragon of an avaricious mère who seems to be an earlier edition of Lady Bracknell.  A cuckoo clock that farts instead of chimes.  A pert soubrette enamored of the valet de chambre, both of them a lot smarter than their employers - naturally, they can't get happily married until their employers do, too.  And then there was Scruple, the lawyer - a character whose first appearance onstage made me realize just what hungry actor really means.  For Scruple, who was talked about all through Act I as being unusually short of stature - two and a half feet tall, if memory serves -without ever putting in an appearance, in Act II at last came self-importantly waddling out in his wig and robes, a wee pair of slippers bobbing up and down at the front of his costume and a long train dragging out behind to conceal a perfectly normal pair of legs belonging to the unfortunate actor who, thanks to the whim of a playwright who had a weakness for sight gags, was forced to play the entire act walking around the stage on his knees.  Whoever hands out the Obies for Best Supporting Actor - I hope you were there and took note!

After the play we went to Clemente's out in Sheepshead Bay, and my husband ate a dozen hardshell crabs cooked in garlic butter and told us all about the skateboarders he had watched in Tompkins Square Park and we tried in vain to convince him that the antics of the flatulent French farceurs were more fun than any skateboarders.  After dinner, we went to Netcost, an enomous Russian supermarket at the edge of Brighton Beach, because Suzanne had never been there, and we all ran around happily squealing over this cross between a Russian Fairway and Zabar's and pointing to signs like "Crepes, 10 for $5.00" and "Pleece do not mix appartizers together - prices all different!" above large salad-bar style vats of chicken liver pate next to a sort of egg salad cake piled on top of something pink that looked like beets in mayonnaise.

Finally we ended up at Coney Island, where I procured an enormous $7 lobster salad sandwich for my son (there's another one who won't go to the theater with me!) at Nathan's, and Suzanne got a pistachio soft ice cream custard, and we got in the car and went home, and I fell asleep along the way because I was so tired and so happy.

Anagrammatization and the Werewolves of London

I am having what passes for Mad Excitement around here.  Instead of trundling up in the Saab to troll the dusty aisles of Home Depot in search of renovation materials for the new house in Rockland County, I am actually going to the theater to see not one, but two Off-Broadway comedies within 24 hours.  Ah, the giddy whirl of metropolitan life! How I shall pine for la vie culturelle when I am dolefully pushing my shopping cart up and down the spacious corridors of the local Stop'n'Shop!  Gentle NYC Readers - do not fail to P.M. me if you have a kind heart and a sofa bed.

Last night's little bonbon, entitled The Mystery of Irma Vep, is a vintage Charles Ludlam number that I saw the last time it made the Off-Broadway rounds, about fifteen years ago, and the thing I most vividly recalled, aside from the insanely rapid costume changes by the two actors who played more than half a dozen different roles, and the fact that I laughed myself silly, was that I would never have believed that an imaginatively idiosyncratic pronunciation of the word sarcophagus could have brought down the house and left me weeping with mirth.

If you know Charles Ludlam's work at all, you know it's all about grossly exaggerated parody and mash-ups of iconic genre classics.  The creepy estate inhabited by Lord Edgar, Lady Enid, and - perhaps? - the ghost of Lord Edgar's late, lamented first wife, Lady Irma Vep (which is an anagram for...? that's right, kids, got it on the first try!) is called Mandarcrest.  Which gives you an idea of the kind of subtlety involved.

"The play is written for two actors who, between them, play eight characters of both sexes. In order to ensure cross-dressing, licenses to perform the play include a stipulation that the actors must be of the same sex. The show requires a large number of sound cues, props, special effects and quick costume changes. Some 35 costume changes take place in the course of the two-hour show."

In short, you get an awful lot of bang for your buck, and the two actors playing eight different characters do not have to bother going to the gym while the play is running, as each actor in his turn gets more than enough exercise either bursting out of an Egyptian tomb, strangling himself with his own right hand, which has just turned into a fabulously fake furry werewolf paw, while gasping, "No! No! Help! For the love of God, save me!" and trying to drag the werewolf paw away from his throat with the (still momentarily) human hand, and shortly thereafter hurling his wooden leg (which has has just amputated offstage while in his character as the werewolf) into the middle of the drawing room while the other actor is struggling out of a maid's uniform and into riding boots and a pith helmet while keeping up a running patter just offstage, all in under thirty seconds.

The plot is best summed up as, "A lot happens."  There are giddy forays into Rebecca, vampire lore, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and even a brief flirtation with James Joyce.  Jane, the sinister parlourmaid (part Nelly Dean, part Mrs. Danvers) intones, "When I makes tea, I makes tea, and when I makes water, I makes water," to which Lady Enid, a dutiful student of Ulysses (or at least, one who made it through the first chapter) replies with a simper, "Well, God send you don't make them in the same pot."  Lord Edgar apostrophizes his late, lamented Irma in the same terms an unfilial Stephen Dedalus addressed to his departed mother as a "Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!"

We become aware that the playwright is also an admirer of Wuthering Heights early on, when Lady Enid, (as embodied by the actor who also plays the one-legged stablehand Nicodemus) burbles about filling her arms with heather.  In proof of the axiom that that good writers borrow, great writers steal, three entire speechs are later lifted wholesale from the Emily Brontë opus, and the well known "He shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome... but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same...My love for (him) resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being!"  produced roars of laughter when Lady Enid substituted Nicodemus for Heathcliff.  

Nicodemus, in his turn, voices Heathcliff's surly denunciation of Edgar Linton and is consoled by Jane the Parlourmaid in the encouraging words of Nelly Dean - "You're fit for a prince in disguise.    Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen?    And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors, and brought to England.    Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!"

The second generation of the denizens of Wuthering Heights and of Thrushcross Grange is frequently omitted by Hollywood so I found myself the only one in the audience who was whooping with glee at the following exchange, which is lifted verbatim from Chapter 2 (lines that are originally uttered by Young Cathy and her nemesis, the priggish servant Joseph) between Jane and her admirer Nicodemus, who has vainly been trying to cop a feel:

JANE: You scandalous old hypocrite! Are you not afraid of being carried away bodily, whenever you mention the devil's name?    I warn you to refrain from provoking me, or I'll ask your abduction as a special favour.    Stop, look here - (taking a long, dark book from a shelf) - I'll show you how far I've progressed in the Black Art -- I shall soon be competent to make a clear house of it.    The red cow didn't die by chance; and your rheumatism can hardly be reckoned among providential visitations!"
NICODEMUS:  Oh, wicked, wicked! May the Lord deliver us!
JANE: No, reprobate! you are a castaway -- be off, or I'll hurt you seriously!    I'll have you all modelled in wax and clay; and the first who passes the limits, I fix, shall -- I'll not say what he shall be done to -- but you'll see!    Go, I'm looking at you!"
Exit NICODEMUS, muttering "Wicked! Wicked!"

Robert Sella managed to infuse Nicodemus with just enough Marty Feldman to invoke Young Frankenstein while still making the performance entirely his own.  As Lady Enid, he rendered the dewy ingenue quality of the Helpless Female Victim so dear to horror audiences everywhere, while imbuing her with a daffy charm that was part Dody Goodman.  His turn as a jaded tomb-raiding Egyptian Guide who produced a lit cigarette from the interior of his fez while mispronouncing standard English to hilarious effect was superb, particularly when the Guide in turn morphed into the somewhat nymphomaniacal resuscitated Egyptian princess, "She-Who-Sleeps-But-Will-One-Day-Awaken."

Arnie Burton as Jane/Lord Edgar was delicious, whether primming up his mouth in disapproval of it all, casting languishing glanced at the portrait of Lady Irma, frisking with the leap of a spring lamb over the very large, very fake dead wolf he had just dispatched with a silver bullet, or salivating over the salacious rhumba of the recently-revived Egyptian princess, who is shaking her false bosom all over the stage and all but inviting her archaeologist rescuer into the sarco-PHA-gus for a little old Twopenny Upright.  By the time s/he is pursuing Lady Enid about the stage, brandishing a plastic meat cleaver and uttering wild cries of, "Ha-ha-HA!" we don't know whom to root for, because at this point we adore them both and want to see them keep carrying on like this for at least another hour.  As I said earlier - this is a physically taxing play that has an enormous amount of physical comedy and must drain the actors of energy by the end of each night as effectively as Lady Irma drains the blood of her victims. Seated in the fourth row of the orchestra, I could see the sweat literally streaming down Arnie Burton's face by the time he and Robert Sella were taking their well-earned bows to the strains of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

It was an excellent night, and now we will see what an afternoon of rhymed couplets at The Heir Apparent will bring.

Pride, Prejudice, & the Zombies of Video Game Wickedness

Recently, I forwarded a link about video games as an art form to my 18 year old son. I figured he would be pleased to see that his favorite leisure activity is now receiving official recognition from MOMA.  Since playing video games for a living is what he apparently intends to do as a career, articles of this kind give me a faint whiff of hope that somewhere, somehow, somebody might even pay him for it.

He thanked me politely, but was not particularly interested in any museum exhibitions, since, as he explained, by the time a video game hits a museum, everybody has already played it a thousand times and it’s become completely obsolete.

We did, however, have an interesting discussion on the subject of “Video Games As a Career Path.”  I pointed out that he is of the first generation that grew up as the industry itself was growing up, and, as a result, he has organically-acquired knowledge of the genre that I, who did not grow up with an Xbox in my room, would have to work doggedly to acquire, but still would not know as well as he does.  

“Look at it this way,” I said.  “You basically know video games the way I know nineteenth century literature.  You know the characters, the story lines, and the history of the games.  You can discourse knowledgeably about the aesthetics of each game, and you have the correct critical vocabulary to describe what works and what does not.”

This brought a smile to his (normally supercilious teenage) lips, and he allowed as how that was true.  Rendered magnanimous by my acknowledgement of his superiority in the Video Game Department, he volunteered, “You know, Mom, there’s a game you might even like.  It’s based on Heart of Darkness.”

“Ah?” I murmured encouragingly. (These moments of genuine meeting of the minds between us are fleeting and precious since he hit puberty; I treat them as though they were rare exotic blossoms that breath of air could shatter.)

“Yes.”  He grew enthusiastic.  “You see, it’s set in post-apocalyptic Iraq, and…”

I must have looked as appalled as I felt, for he hastily said, “You have to understand, Mom.  Good books make lousy video games.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I countered.  “Why would that necessarily be true?”

He sighed.  “Look.  In every game – well, not every game, but – the good ones – there's you, and then there are the minions, and your job is to knock the minions out of the way and by doing so, get to the next level and ultimately get to their chief and eliminate him.  You do that by killing them.  Most of the books you’re talking about don’t have enough people you can murder.”

“So you’re saying it’s kind of like a game of chess?  You have to eliminate the pawns so you can ultimately take the king?”

He brightened.  “Exactly!”

I thought it over.  “But why couldn’t you use that general concept with, say, a novel that’s – oh, I don’t know…a comedy of manners?  Like, for instance, say that the point of the game is for Elizabeth Bennet to get past all the obstacles and marry Mr. Darcy?”

My son looked pained. “Because that would be boring.”

I was indignant.  “No, it wouldn’t!  The pawns – the minions – they could be all the creepy women who don’t want Elizabeth to marry Mr. Darcy.  Like Mr. Bingham’s nasty sisters, and Lady Catherine De Bourgh.”

He thought about it.  “Could Elizabeth Bennet kill them?”

I was taken aback.  “Um – no.  No, I don’t think that would be in character for her.”

He shook his head.  “I’m sorry.  This isn’t gonna work,  unless Elizabeth Bennet can murder everybody in her path.  She needs to lop off those Bingham sisters’ heads with a machete, stab Lady Catherine with an ice pick, and show up in front of Mr. Darcy covered in their blood – then you’ve got a game.”

I was crestfallen.  But then I had a brainstorm.  “You know, somebody wrote a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Maybe we could just put zombies in it?”

My son looked at me, kindly, but with infinite pity.  “I’m sorry, Mom.  It’s been done.” 

Seeing my downcast face, he added, even more kindly, “Pride and Prejudice… hmm.  Why do I know that name?  Was that a movie?”

I sighed.  “Yes.  Several times, in fact.”

“Was it a good movie?”

I thought of the week I had brought him home, newly born, from the hospital, and of how the A&E miniseries featuring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth and Colin Firth as Darcy – brand new at the time, just like my son - had enlivened those night feedings and made them bearable.  “Yes. Yes, it was...very good. And I remember how excited I was when the miniseries came out on videotape.”

The look of infinite pity was back.  Only now, it was accompanied by slow, incredulous head-shaking.

“Videotape.  Mom.  Do you ever listen to yourself?”

I slunk away, to sulk over a cup of tea and a copy of Evelina.

We Are Misled Around a Manor House

At last! At last!  A day with nothing to do in it! Add sunshine, and smile!

I am sure you are as tired of hearing about the travails of house renovation as I am of writing about it. The good news is that we have finished all the decision-making and ordering of stuff.  I have to put in a plug for that wonderful woman, Ingrid Sloane, who assisted us at Wayne Tile in Ramsey, NJ.  She worked with us on making our selections till ten minutes after she was supposed to be out of there on a Friday evening.  After we'd finally left her in peace, she went out of her way to work on totting up an estimate for us after the store had closed and then spent another 45 minutes with us when we returned on Saturday, finalizing the sale, checking details, walking around the store with us to lay the floor tile we'd picked against the wall tiles we'd wanted, finding a better bullnose to match the marble than what we had originally chosen, and even managing to give us a slight discount on the bill. She was so kind, so professional, and so truly interested in making sure we would be happy with the final result. The minute she saw us, she hurried over to say, "I am so glad you're back - I found something that I think will work better, and I'd like to show it to you."

Thanks to Ingrid, we will have beautiful bathrooms.  And, more importantly, thank to Ingrid, today we had our first weekend day free of Renovation Obsessions in God-only-knows-how-long.  Since the weather was cooperating, we decided to frisk.

It happened to be the one day of the month that the New Jersey Botanical Garden opens up the manor house on the property to the public.  A vast Tudor-style edifice of the type that only the super-rich of the 1920's and earlier seemed to build (entire 16th century rooms were snapped up at European rummage sales, brought over by boat, and installed in the mansion, much to the dismay of the architect, who had to keep adding more house as the chatelaine of the place, a Mrs. Salomon - that's right, as in "Salomon Brothers" - found another bargain she simply couldn't resist), Skylands Manor is quite the impressive little country home.  The breakfast room alone sports a three-tiered marble baptismal font the length of a coffin (improbably bedizened with naked cherubs) which the inhabitants, in a whimsical mood, used to bank with hothouse flowers.  There are 16th century Swiss and German stained glass medallions set into quite a few of the mullioned windows, and you could certainly roast a couple of dozen oxen in the fireplaces, if company were to turn up unexpectedly.

The library is a lovely room but, unhappily, the place is leased to a catering firm that hosts weddings and other events, and the caterers' idea of simulating a baronial library is to stock the shelves with Reader's Digest Condensed Books, odd volumes of the Funk & Wagnall's encyclopedia, and other horrors that shall go unnamed here.  Let's put it this way - there was nothing on the bookshelves I was tempted to stick under my jacket.  Which is probably just as well, because somebody's abandoned drink from last night's revelry was still on one of the shelves, right in front of a hardcover copy of Jackie Collins' Lucky.

I will probably be accused of snobbery for this, but - it does seem to me that, if you are going to be a docent and lead people around on tours, it behooves you to get your facts straight and not misinform the populace -unless, of course, you plan to do it in grand style, as did Dame Maggie Smith in dear Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage.  Our docent was kindly and well-intentioned, but she employed the word medieval with wild abandon as a description of everything from the baptismal font to a Jacobean linen press (by the time we are in the Jacobean era, we are talking late English Renaissance).  Even the imported millstone that forms the rear doorstep had no choice but to be medieval.

My  ability to exercise restraint of tongue and pen was sorely tested once again when our guide asserted that  Dieu et mon droit  (carved over the fireplace) means God is on my right and that, furthermore, the motto is Scottish in origin and was  introduced to England upon the ascent of the first Stuart king, James I.  In fact, it means God and my right; it was the battle cry of Richard I ("the Lionheart") in 1198, and later Henry V (who reigned 1413-1422) adopted it as the motto on the British monarchy's coat of arms. It refers the the divine right of kings, in short, and not to somewhat presumptuous seating arrangements at a dinner table that would place the King of England at the head of the table, right above God. Dear James I reigned in England from 1603-1625 and his arms bore the motto Beati Pacifici - blessed are the peacemakers.  In his memory, then, I did not contradict the lady whose -er - medieval French was so sadly not all that it could be.

It was in the library that she told us of the ghost who walks the premises - the ghost, in fact, of the departed housekeeper, who has been spotted upstairs in the bedrooms from time to time. (You can rent one of the bedrooms from the very caterers who have such idiosyncratic taste in literature, and keep a watch for her yourself.)  I ventured a small pleasantry - "I assume that would be the ghost of Mrs. Danvers?"  Several members of our party chuckled, but our guide was flustered and wanted to know whether Mrs. Danvers had ever worked for the Vanderbilts or the Morgans?  I tried to ignore the rumblings that betokened  that Daphne DuMaurier and Alfred Hitchcock were spinning in their graves, and politely told her I was referring to a fictional character - a sinister housekeeper who was wont to lurk about pining for the good old days under the aegis of the first Mrs. DeWinter, a certain Rebecca,  in a novel of that name that had once been rather well-known.

Undoubtedly, the unhappy housekeeper now walks and wrings her hands because the caterers are slovenly about leaving unattended stemware on the bookshelves.

I Plagiarize Myself

Heavens, here it is, Wicked Wednesday again, and me without a thing to wear.  I've been so plunged into the abyss that Jean-Paul Sartre so succinctly summed up in his memorable phrase, "Hell is bathroom renovations," that I quite forgot I was going to have to be wicked today.

Fortunately, it is also Hans Christian Andersen's birthday.  I shall therefore offer my Gentle Readers an excerpt from one of my Perverse Verses, and I am sure that the H.C. Andersen estate would agree that what I have done to that poor departed fabulist is quite wicked enough.  (You want to know why I riff on nineteenth century texts?  The authors have been dead so long that nobody is gonna sue.)

Here, with no further ado, are the introductory stanzas of:



The Emperor’s New Clothes


It isn’t all too often that we find
a bold and honest soul who’ll speak his mind.
From early on, we’re brought up to dissemble.
Our fondest secret hope is to resemble
closely, in action, status, garb and speech
whoever sets the current fashion.  Each
so-called individual aspires
to ape his betters – disregard deniers! -
to be a cookie-cutter-type reissue
(albeit snipped from slightly better tissue)
of anyone the hoi polloi admires.
‘Tis musing on this matter that inspires
a story, writ by the immortal pen
of fairytaler H.C. Andersen.

So we suggest you pay him careful heed
the next time you’ve become convinced you need
to allocate more than your monthly wages
for worn-out jeans that someone else “pre-ages.”
(In other words, there are already rips
across the seat, and Jackson Pollock drips
applied by some untalented young  punk,
thus rendering them artsy-fartsy junk.)
For this year’s rage is next year’s fashion folly –
passé as any gown from Hello, Dolly!
And mutton dressed as lamb can never please
the most discriminating palates.  These
things are well to bear in mind; but even worse
than emulating silly modes, the curse
of parroting another dimwit’s thought,
convinced, the while, it is your own, has caught
many unwary undergrads (we will not
speak of their professors here.) The hypnot-
ic impact of a catchy, stupid phrase
is certain to become the latest craze.
Both on and off the campus, we can find,
in madding crowds, not one who has a mind
to call his own – they glibly holler “Doh!”
“Got milk, dude?” “Where’s the beef?” or simply “Yo.”
But - as said Lenny Bruce, my favorite tipster -
“Nothing is sadder than an aging hipster.’”

The sovereign of this eponymous
short classic is, in fact, anonymous –
the trope of titled clotheshorse always fits
at least a few royals in the headlines.  It’s
pleasant to recall First Ladies whose
besetting passion was for buying shoes.
Or there’s the late, lamented Princess Di -
“Shop till you drop!” her lifelong battle cry.
“I’m thick as any plank,” she liked to boast,
“but I look ravishing in shades of toast.”

There's quite a lot more, but remember, I am hoping to sell at least a copy or two, and so, like Andrew Marvell's mistress, I am forced - entirely against my otherwise honest and forthright nature - to be coy .  (Would you buy a used poem from this woman?)

Love Is Not Love Which Alters When It Aberration Finds

Today marks the one-week anniversary of The Day I Came Down With the Creeping Crud, and I am truly sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I woke up last Tuesday with that "Uh-oh, I think I congratulated myself too soon on having gotten through an entire winter without getting even one really bad cold" feeling. This was something of a disaster, because I had been looking forward to hearing one of my favorite authors, Jennifer Finney Boylan, give a reading at Barnard that afternoon.  And here I was - sick.

I spent much of the day on the fence about whether or not to force myself to walk up to the Barnard campus, less than 20 blocks from my apartment.  I kept setting up little "If this happens, then I won't go" roadblocks for myself and then setting up other "but if this happens, then I will go" counterpoints.  Boylan is touring her latest book, Stuck in the Middle With You - a book about her life as a transgendered male-to-female person who has remained married to her original spouse - a woman who was unaware that James was ultimately going to become Jenny when they were wed - and with whom Boylan has two sons, now college age, but who were quite small when she began her transitioning process.  The latest book is about the parenting aspect, which I imagine is pretty similar for all of us (like myself) who have a kid or kids who are now applying to college.  In other words, sometimes you are so proud you are practically swooning, and other days you wonder what on earth ever possessed you to even have children, when the alternative was having a healthy bank balance, lots of nice vacations that didn't involve Disney characters, and blessedly peaceful breakfasts free of surly senioritis snarlings about how nobody is getting to that first period science class on time, now that they have their college acceptances in hand.

So first I thought I'd get on the subway and see whether I could pick up a copy of Stuck in the Middle With You at the 82nd St. B&N.  Unfortunately, the book, too is in a transition stage - the paperback is coming out later this month, and therefore all the hardcovers have been pulled from the shelves and sent back to the publisher.  So - the "Personalized Author Inscription" incentive to get to that lecture was off the table.  I checked a few used bookshops, just in case, but no luck.  Well, then - clearly, I was meant to stay home and nurse my cold.

The reading was at 4:30, and I stayed in bed under the covers until 3:00, willing myself to fall asleep and thus have the decision taken out of my hands. I couldn't do it.  The thought I'm never sorry for the things I've done, I'm just sorry for the things I didn't do kept nagging at me like a whining dentist's drill.  It's the truth.  I have always regretted missing out on cultural activities after I've opted out.  Okay - there has been the very occasional Broadway play I've walked out of - but most of the time, I wind up glad that I made myself do it.  And Boylan is a known quantity to me - I had heard her read seven or eight years ago when she was touring I'm Looking Through You, another memoir, and she was terrific.  Which, come to think of it, led me to another Cultural Enrichment experience I owe directly to Jenny Boylan - in that book, she mentioned spending a lot of time as a teenager visiting the Barnes Foundation, an institution I'd never heard of - the fabulous collection of Impressionist art assembled by a certain Dr. Albert Barnes, who lived in the Philadelphia area and spent his time buying up every Cezanne and Renoir he could get his hands on whenever he wasn't treating patients.  Thanks to Jenny Boylan's description of the museum, I'd gotten online, had done a bit of research, was blown away by what I read, and had gotten my ticket to see the collection in its original setting - a magnificent manor set amid beautiful gardens, with an enormous Matisse mural gracing the main room, before the collection was moved to its present quarters behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Yes - that did it.  I would have to blow my nose, get my clothes back on and  just do it!

I was a student at Barnard in the early eighties, when the student center was still called MacIntosh and when MacIntosh didn't even mean computers yet. (My senior thesis was typed on corrasable paper.  If you don't know what that is, you are young and the only revenge I can take on you is to make you look it up yourself.) MacIntosh has since been torn down and replaced with a much taller, sleeker building (it's ugly, but then, so was MacIntosh).

The lecture hall is deep in the bowels of this new building; it is oval, and lined with shiny wooden wainscoting.  As Professor Boylan observed, looking at our surroundings with much of the bewildered admiration I was experiencing mirrored on her face, it was quite a lot like being in a very posh submarine.

Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, née James Boylan, hit the New York Times Bestseller List in 2003 with her memoir She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders.  Prior to her gender reassignment surgery, Boylan had lived the average unconventionally conventional life of a typical English professor/author.  (We are all a little off-center...that's why we wind up in the English Department.  Kooky people who hate taking orders tend to wind up in the English Department and then crab about having to do committee work.)  Happy marriage to a beautiful and intelligent woman, two nice kids, a few published novels, tenured position, best friends with fellow English Department colleague Richard Russo - in short, an enviable life.  But there was always this problem of being conscious of having been born into the wrong body, and what, if anything, was to be done about it.

Boylan's journey of self-discovery, self-awareness, and ultimate self-actualization is beautifully set forth in She's Not There.  Prior to reading the book, I already had friendships with several transgendered people... I live in New York City, and one of the perks of life in Manhattan is that we get the benefit of every conceivable type of person or group feeling free to come here and be exactly who they are, without disguise or apology.  My closest transgendered friend happened to be a gifted mathematics tutor, and since I am hopeless at math and very good at verbal studies, this particular friend (who is also named Jennifer) and I teamed up to tutor a high school student who was studying for the SAT.  But Boylan's memoir opened my understanding of transgender issues in ways that conversations with my friend had not.  That's because Jennifer Finney Boylan is a gifted writer.  You can hang out and talk with with your friend Steve, who is cheating on his wife, and you might understand what makes him tick - or you can read Anna Karenina and let Tolstoy explain to you what is making Stiva Oblonsky, who is cheating on his wife Dolly, mess around with their French governess, and if you're me, you'll understand Stiva better than Steve, because now you've had a genius explain it to you.

I don't know whether "genius" is the word to use for Jenny Boylan.  It's a much overused word, in my opinion.  What I can, however, say with confidence is that she is such a warm, engaging and totally human writer that I found it impossible not to relate to her.  Who among us has not experienced the sensation of not being able to fit in?  Who has not had a deep, dark secret that we had planned to hug to us beyond the portals of the grave?  Who has not had a moment of epiphany that cracked open the painful and dazzling revelation that everything in our lives up until this moment has been a mere prelude to a turning point of decision that will change us, and everything we hold dear - forever?  Who does not know the fear of losing everything that attends such a moment, or the sense of freedom and relief that follows the courageous decision that we have no choice but to forge ahead anyway, because silence equals death?  It was not the circumstances that were important - it was that I could completely identify with the feelings.  And this, I think, is what put She's Not There on the bestseller list.  This is a book, not only about transgender experience, but also about the human experience, and this is what accounts for its universal appeal.

As a speaker, Boylan is just as warm and engaging as she is on the printed page.  There is the wry, somewhat self-deprecatory sense of humor that makes her books such delicious reads.  There is the same earnest desire to make the world a better, safer and more tolerant place.  There is the frequently tossed-off casual literary reference in which English major geeks of all stripes delight. There is the educator/explicator who will out (an occupational hazard for those in academia).  And there is profound truth expressed in simplicity of language that it in itself an art.  Professor Boylan began by remarking that she had never originally thought of herself as an activist, but that "Writing and telling our stories is a great form of activism."  Well - yes.  And that is true for all of us who write and tell our stories.

Her talk was witty and never had the flavor of the "canned" lecture; many of her remarks were extemporized.  Perhaps my favorite moment was when she quoted Shakespearean Sonnet 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds...

Only, she messed up and said "Which alters when it aberration finds."  She jangled to a confused halt, stammered, "I'm so sorry - I totally screwed that up - it should have been 'Love is not love when it alteration finds'" - and everyone began roaring with laughter.

During the Q&A, she called on me, and I was able to relate the true story of a friend who had read Boylan's book and whose relationship with their child, who was having gender-identity confusion, improved as a result of reading the book.  Because my friend had gained a deeper understanding of some of the pains, fears, and conflicts the child was experiencing by reading She's Not There, parent and child were able to have a serene, productive and meaningful conversation, in which the parent was not judgmental, and refrained from giving opinions, advice, or prognostications about the future.  At the end of the discussion, the child smiled and said, "Thank you...I feel complete now."

At the end of the day, if our child turns to us, after a long period of having grappled alone with a seemingly insurmountable problem and, as a result of having confided in us, is able to be at peace and say, "Thank you...I feel complete now" - that is the greatest reward any parent can ask.

And for this reason, despite having a bad cold and an even worse case of inertia, the fact that I made myself leave the house and get up to Barnard for that lecture was one of the best things I did all week.  I'm never sorry for the things I've done...I'm just sorry for the things I didn't do.