A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.
Books
READ: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman; Notebooks by Tennessee Williams, ed. by Margaret Bradham Thornton [interesting, but I don't recommend reading it at the same time as a Holocaust memoir; if you do, you're liable to find Williams's constant, self-absorbed whining somewhat unsympathetic].
COMING UP: Love in the Time of Cholera, some Philip Larkin, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire [I'm on a Williams kick], The Letters of Noel Coward.
Movies
SAW: My Sister's Keeper [you can keep her, all right; keep her far from me].
Music
PURCHASED: Billy Elliot (original cast recording), Next to Normal (original Broadway cast recording).
MOST RECENTLY PLAYED TRACKS IN MY iTUNES LIBRARY: "Save My Money," Eddie Griffin; "Carrying a Torch," Bernadette Peters; "Wig in a Box," Hedwig and the Angry Inch (original cast recording); "My Father's a Homo; Everyone Tells Jason to See a Psychiatrist; This Had Better Come to a Stop," The March of the Falsettos (original cast); "Man in the Mirror," Michael Jackson.
Current Interests
Mark Sanford, tabloid fixtures, US history, camp, Chicago, female pop stars, the South, right-wingers, Michael Jackson, musicals, advertising, the gays, theater politics, Philip Roth, cubicle life, social media, terrible TV, plays, Kito.
Fool's Four
FOUR STAND-UP COMICS I'VE SEEN PERFORM LIVE:
1. Margaret Cho.
2. Janeane Garofalo.
3. Kathy Griffin.
4. I've only got three; I do not like stand-up comedy.
FOOLISH FLASHBACKS
TWO YEARS AGO: "[S]omeone told me that the last time the bar showed the Jennifer Hudson version, the crowd erupted in protest."
THREE YEARS AGO:
"Number of bare asses I saw (not counting strippers): 3.
Percentage of these that were in assless chaps: 33."
Glitter
Roger Ebert: "Michael Jackson was so gifted, so lonely, so confused, so sad. He lost happiness somewhere in his childhood, and spent his life trying to go back there and find it. When he played the Scarecrow in 'The Wiz' (1978), I think that is how he felt, and Oz was where he wanted to live. It was his most truly autobiographical role. He could understand a character who felt stuffed with straw, but could wonderfully sing and dance, and could cheer up the little girl Dorothy."
ELSEWHERE:
I can't seem to find it online, but my Critic's Choice review of Steep Theatre's The Hollow Lands is in this week's Chicago Reader.
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