How weird is this: I was remembering college theater and how the girl putting on my makeup for one play always smelled of fast-food onions and how another flunkie and I worked hours and hours stenciling a wallpaper design on flats for a production of August Strindberg’s The Father, and then a character on a recent Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip mentioned the Swedish playwright. Strindberg mentioned on network TV? Is the apocalypse coming? (I already believe that the antichrist is among us.)
When I studied his plays in college, it was the first time I encountered the term misogynist, Strindberg being a famous one. It means hatred/fear of women.
I’ve never seen a writers’ table for a TV show, but I bet the writers look like the freaks and slobs on Studio 60. (You probably know that Sarah Paulson’s character on that show is based on Kristin Chenoweth.)
Speaking of Saturday Night Live-type shows, Tina Fey’s 30 Rock series is pretty good (especially Alec Baldwin) although I could do without Jane Krakowski, about my least favorite actor.
Moviegoer
This year’s Truman Capote movie (Infamous) is quite a bit more entertaining than last year’s Truman Capote movie (Capote).
As I’ve been telling everyone: If you see The Departed, don’t get too attached to any of the characters. Martin Scorsese is quite a storyteller, and, for me, that’s the most important thing in moviemaking. (You talk about Tom Cruise being creepy; Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio are also pretty creepy.)
It would have made more sense just to put Jon Stewart in the lead role in Man of the Year, a fitfully entertaining fantasy that imagines a talk-show person like Stewart, Stephen Colbert or Bill Maher as a presidential candidate.
Passages
One of the many pleasures of living in Central Florida in the ’70s was shopping at the Golden Cricket in Winter Park. You didn’t just shop; you went to chat up the owners Bill and Dick, mainly the more gregarious Bill.
I got my Hal McIntosh at Golden Cricket and countless gifts for others.
The Golden Cricket is gone, along with such other Central Florida institutions as Ronnie’s, the Villa Nova, Ivey’s, Jordan Marsh, Freddie’s, Sheik’s and Belk’s.
Bill Keeley died a few years back; Dick Hill died last week.
Navel gazing
A couple of my favorite artists are represented in “Paths to Impressionism: French and American Landscape Paintings From the Worcester Art Museum” (why are most exhibit titles so wordy?): John Singer Sargent and Childe Hassam. I counted six Hassams. Notes with the works say that many of the American artists painted what they considered a disappearing landscape, and I couldn’t help thinking what if they saw it now. It has disappeared in many places. (Favorite artist name: Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Pena.) When I visited this exhibit, at the Orlando Museum of Art, you could’ve thrown a bowling ball and not hit anyone else; it was so quiet that one of the guards was sitting on a bench snoozing. I tiptoed around him.
Funny how incumbents start being against “special interests” when they’re running for re-election.
On her HBO special, Wanda Sykes says she likes to pull up to a well-dressed white man at a light and stare at him, and then when he looks, she locks her door.
You have to admire that awesome WKMG-Channel 6 spin on Lauren Rowe’s moving to morning TV.
I wonder if Sting ever regrets having that silly name. He has said it is a bona fide nickname given to him because he once wore a yellow and black outfit.
I’m thinking of paying Doug Guetzloe to keep my real name out of the paper.
Does Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert have two seats in Congress?
I especially liked the first round of the baseball playoffs because there were four series going on and there were day games. Having all the World Series games at night (for stupid TV purposes) has taken a lot of the charm away from sports’ greatest annual event.
Oh, to be in those locker rooms when they celebrate: I wouldn’t be spraying champagne — I’d be drinking it. What a waste.
Died 70 years ago today: Anne Sullivan. Helen Keller’s teacher was born April 14, 1866.
I’m watching old movies and now and then, I yell, “Gregory Peck, you put down that cigarette; it’s gonna kill you someday” or “Humphrey DeForest Bogart, quit smoking; Lauren Bacall must think your breath stinks like a gut wagon.”
