Broadway Baby...Teeth

2/12/2016

I arrive for a dental appointment at a little office in Chelsea. It looks more like an old fashioned apothecary than a dental practice, with lots of little shelves and colored glass bottles. I'm surprised to see that my dentist in Broadway legend Bernadette Peters.

"I moonlight here in between gigs," she explains.

I'm not sure my insurance will cover my visit, but she promises we will work out a payment schedule, so I hop in her chair and she starts my exam.

Eyes on the Prize

1/24/16

The things that happened in my dream last night feel more like a run on sentence than an actual dream, but I'll give it a shot.

My dad and my sister come to my hotel room to help me pack up and check out. I have a lot of stuff.

We pack up my sister's car and she leaves.

My dad and I take a break and go to an auditorium to attend a political rally where we meet the former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

My dad turns into Martin Luther King, Jr. We stay in the balcony of the auditorium to see a play about two black woman running for the senate, starring Angela Bassett. There are actually three women on stage, and I'm puzzled because Angela seems to have the least meaty role. 

I suppose I should mention that Marvin Hamlisch is also in the balcony watching nervously and operating the curtain from his seat. It seems he is one of the producers of the play. 

Martin Luther King Jr gets into a verbal joust with some of the other playgoers and we scurry out of the theatre as he becomes agitated.

My dad is once again my dad, and we stop at a bar for a drink. I notice they're showing "What's Up, Doc?" on their TV, and I realize I've taken my dad to a gay bar.

We hightail it out of the bar and back to the hotel to clean out my room. Another family has already been let in so we only have a few minutes to grab what we can and go. In the end I take a laundry bag full of clothes and my dad's old baseball and basketball trophies from high school and college.

We go to his car so he can take me home, but I can not remember my address. 

-----------------------

It does seem like I've been dreaming about my dad a lot, and it sometimes leaves me a little shaken when I awake. You can glean all sorts of things about a person from their dreams, and sometimes they are uncomfortably personal. However, I will repeat the quote I once used to keep hung over my desk by Isak Dinesen:  

"All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them."

It's a pretty famous quote, but today I learned it's really just a snippet of what she actually said, which I think gives the fragment a little more context.

"I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy."

Not unlike my dreams. 

I'll Take Inappropriate Dreams For 400, Please

1/10/16

This one is not for the kids due to some brief sexual imagery. 

I'm on a game show hosted by super nerd Chris Hardwick in a pair of boxer briefs. He's getting catcalls from the audience, and so decides to put a pair of tweed pants. But before he does, he allows each of the contestants a chance to cop a feel, which I do. Happily. 

 

There's more but I think you get the gist. 

Unfinished Business

12/31/15

There's usually a little unfinished business to attend do at the end of the year, and for 2015, for me at least, it involves the late Ann Meara.

I'm a little too young to remember her from her appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, but I can recall many an afternoon on the couch with my mom watching Anne and her husband Jerry Stiller cutting it up on every afternoon chat show from Mike Douglas to Dinah Shore. 

I'm not sure how I knew she had red hair since our color TV broke when I was about 4 and we made due with black and white until I turned 18. Nevertheless, I was always thrilled when this scarlet haired entertainer showed up. I know that Stiller & Meara are thought of as a comedy duo, which they were of course, but I hesitate to call Anne Meara a comedian. She never just stood there and told jokes (not that there's anything wrong with that.) Stiler & Meara's routines were based on human nature, character, and relationships. Everything from their routines about a Jewish boy dating a shiksa to their celebrated commercials for Blue Nun wine. 

Throughout her career she vacillated seamlessly between comic characters and more dramatic fare. She was in that starry production of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie with Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson. I've written in the past that seeing that play was the single most exciting night I've ever spent in a theatre, and Anne Meara was a big part of that.

She could also be uproarious and bawdy. I would have love to have seen her create the part of the sexually adventurous but culinarily challenged Bunny Flingus in the original production of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, but alas in 1971 I could not yet cross the street by myself, let alone travel to New York to see a play.  

Collen Dewhusrt, with whom Meara performed in the Public Theatre's 1957 production of Macbeth, paints a colorful portrait of Anne with just one sentence from her autobiography:

  "In these years since, [performing in Macbeth] I have been to many gatherings and parties only to be greeted--from across the room--by Anne Meara, upon seeing me, screaming, "Who's the best fucking second witch you ever had!" You, Anne, the best and the only."*

Although I never met her, I do have a few sort of personal memories about her. On the night of my 30th birthday, my good friend Lenore took me to see Anne starring in a wonderful play she had written called After Play. Five years before that, when I was living in Costa Rica for a semester, a crazy dream I had about Anne Meara, a fire truck, and Santa Claus was the very first dream I thought was worthy of committing to paper. 

In my early thirties, I was seeing a therapist who lived and worked on the Upper West Side. She recounted to me how she'd seen Anne in the fitting room at Talbots. Dr. Lowenstein told me Anne dressed like a bag lady. Well, you better believe that was the beginning of the end for me and Dr. Lowenstein. 

About fifteen years ago, when I was trying to get a screenplay I had written off the ground, Anne Meara is one of the people I mailed it to. In response I received a lovely note on a little piece of stationery with the words Stiller & Meara printed on the top, and signed by Anne. That's a greatly treasured memento of my old life in New York, and of a greatly treasured talent. 

*Six commas in one sentence; Colleen Dewhurst was a woman after my own heart!

Defying Sanity

 I've actually been thinking about dreams the past couple of days, since I attended a production of The Nutcracker with my sister and her husband.  Most of the plot, in as much as there is a plot, is based on the sleepy hallucinations of a little girl who's had way too much sugar. It got me thinking of what dreams actually mean, all the things they inspire, and why they can be so unsettling. I couldn't help but wonder, as Carrie Bradshaw would say, what would a ballet of one of my dreams look like?

Take this one for example...

12/28/15

Something has happened to me. I'm not quite sure what, but it seems catastrophic. I think I may have had some sort of accident, or breakdown or medical emergency. I'm living in a half-way house in Harlem.  I've been assigned a pair of social workers: Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence.

We talk about how they're going to help me get back up on my feet, but that I can only stay in this place for about two months. Carol tells me she has to leave for a few days for a job out of town, but not to worry because she'll be back in town on Friday to perform in Wicked. I tell her not to worry about coming to see me, that I don't want her to have to run around so much when she has a show to do.

My late father shows up to take me to buy a typewriter. But first he wants to stop for doughnuts. Sadly, the doughnut store doesn't open for another hour, so we head to a pawn shop. 

Though I was hoping for something newer, my dad picks out a lime green electric typewriter. He goes back out to the car while I look for replacement ribbons. It turns out there are no ribbons, as the saleslady shows me how to pour the ink out of a bottle and right into the typewriter. I scurry out of the store and into the backseat of my dad's station wagon, and we take off, presumably in search of doughnuts. 

Time After Time

10/25/15

I've just arrived in Korea. I enter an enormous hotel suite and see an assortment of relatives; cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. I am exhausted and somewhat jet lagged. Everyone is sitting around watching Korean television, and I join them. 

A rerun of All In The Family is just starting. The opening credits are incredibly long with about a dozen actors listed, and instead of Archie and Edith singing "Those Were The Days," Edith is seated alone at the piano croaking out the standard "Time After Time" (not the Cyndi Lauper song, but rather the 1947 tune written by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn.)

I'm confused about the time difference and ask someone if it's really today or is it already tomorrow. No one knows.

I try to brush my teeth, but I'm so exhausted I insert the bristle end of my toothbrush into the tube, where it becomes lodged. My cousin Monica gives me a quizzical look, as if to say "what the hell are you doing?"

An interior window looks over a sort of atrium. At the bottom of the atrium is a massive swimming pool, maybe 30 stories below. I take a skimmer and try to retrieve something from the pool. Amazingly, the skimmer reaches all the way down. This strikes me as kind of a dangerous thing, so I retract the skimmer and search for a safe place to store it.

Julie Andrews Was my Prom Date

The Swoos-O-Meter

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A Front Row To History

August 4th marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of the legendary White House reporter and columnist Helen Thomas. After covering every president from Kennedy to Obama and asking them all tough, sometimes impertinent questions on behalf of all Americans, Helen's storied career came to a messy and abrupt end in 2010. 

A brief and edited conversation the nearly 90 year old Thomas had with a rabbi, in which she said the Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine," was released on YouTube. The reaction was swift and largely negative, and Thomas had little choice but to resign her post as a columnist for the Hearst Corporation and give up her front row seat to history. 

It's unfortunate that Thomas's flippant response to a question about Israel has tarnished her legacy in many people's minds. Personalllly I have mixed feelings about what happened but one thing I feel strongly: for me the messy, ugly end does not negate the fine, necessary and even patriotic sum of her life's work.   

They're Playing Her Song

Entertainer Lucie Arnaz was born on July 17, 1951.If you recognize this illustration as an attempt to capture her Broadway debut in the 1979 Broadway musical They're Playing Our Song, then you're really old or perhaps even gayer than I am.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Lucie. When I was about 9 I remember seeing her on Marcus Welby, MD as a tennis player whose career is threatened by a thyroid condition. Oh the drama!

I know it's not a very popular opinion, but I never really warmed up to her legendary mother, Lucille Ball. As a kid I viewed Ball as a gravelly-voiced, chain-smoking aloof and imposing sort of Duchess who made the rounds of the afternoon talk shows to hold court. Young Lucie, in contrast, seemed spirited and approachable.

I had a dream about the two of them a few years ago. Lucie was filming a TV version of They're Playing Our Song on Amsterdam Avenue behind Lincoln Center. Her mother showed up and caused quite a fuss. She felt that Lucie should have two trailers; one for when she was singing and one for when she was dancing. Lucie, humble as ever, appeared quite mortified.

When I was 20 I met Lucie Arnaz on Easter Sunday with flowers and a fan letter at the stage door of the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia. It was my first fan letter, and one of the few I've ever written. I was so impressed that she wrote back, even while performing 8 shows a week in a demanding musical, while living in a strange city and traveling with three small children. I kept that letter for many years but somewhere along the way I managed to lose it. But it doesn't matter; I memorized it within minutes of receiving it:

Dear Jim,

Thank you for the flowers and the kind words. They made me feel great!

God Bless, 

Lucie Arnaz

A Force To Be Reckoned With

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...actually it this morning right

 in my bedroom.  I awoke from a dream in which I was telling someone 

that "generations of young girls"are now predisposed to become space 

travelers because of Princess Leia. 

Once awake I checked my phone and saw a text from my sister. 

It was a quote from Postcards From The Edge , which 

was written by Princess Leia herself, 

Carrie Fisher. Oh, and the quote prominently featured 

the word "generation."  

Coincidence...or was it The Force?

I have to admit I don't really understand the Force since I've never been able to sit through Star Wars without falling asleep. 

Hey Scout

 To Kill A Mockingbird and the Finch family have been very much in the news leading up to the release of Go Set A Watchman today. This little iPad doodle of Scout is my little tip of the cap to this great American novel and its creator Harper Lee. 

Why I Oughta...

7/14/15

This post offers readers a restaurant review of sorts, and a chance to see just how warped my mind is.  But I warn you, there is a section that is really gross and kind of graphic, at least by my standards. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

There's a restaurant in my new neighborhood just about two blocks from me on South Street called Jon's. They make a pretty decent cheesesteak and Buster and I have gone there for brunch a few times. This past Sunday we ordered an omelette with smoked mozzarella for me and a side of bacon for Buster. Well, mostly for Buster. He very generously offered to share since I always pick up the bill.

The omelette was tasty and so huge I left about a third of it on the plate. The potatoes were sliced into tiny little rectangles, looking more liked diced apple than anything else. They weren't great, but two or three or six squirts of ketchup really helps.

The problem with Jon's is their logo. You see Jon's advertises itself as the birthplace of Larry Fine (nee Fineberg) of The Three Stooges, who was born in Philadelphia in 1902. They've got a giant mural of him playing the violin painted high above South Street with his face comically contorted and his hair all akimbo.*

This is actually the second mural the artist David McShane painted of Larry Fine for Jon's. The first, which like the current painting, feature Larry in a loud checkered suit jacket juxtaposed on top of a black and yellow bull's eye. Larry's not really doing much in this first portrait, just being Larry, which really is more than enough. It's this first image that can be found on the menu and on a sign in front of the restaurant proclaiming "Birth Place of Larry Fine!"

At first I thought it was funny, and I wondered why they didn't just call the place Larry's or Fine's. But now that I've spent a few Sundays staring at that sign and letting my imagination run wild while waiting for frittatas and Diet Coke, I've contemplated all sorts of horrifying images.

Second Warning: the gross part is almost here.

Now there's a good chance that Larry wasn't even born at this address, only somewhere in the neighborhood. And even if he was born at this address, there's a good chance it was not a restaurant at the time. And even if it was a restaurant at the time, there's no reason to think that Mrs. Fineberg, fresh from slicing the potatoes into little rectangles for some rather mundane home fries, stooped over at the sink just long enough to squeeze out  little Larry with his crooked nose and familiar crimson locks sculpted into a topiary so ornate it strained the very limits of her womanhood, before washing her hands (hopefully!) and cracking open a few dozen eggs.

And yet...and yet...when I read those words "birth place of Larry Fine" and see that crazy face superimposed over the hypnotic black and  yellow circles receding further and further into the distance like a pinwheel, it's as if Larry is lurching forward, emerging fully formed from some slap-stick-mad-house version of a birth canal.

It's lovely that Philadelphia has found a way to honor one of its native sons who went out into the world and made good for himself while entertaining millions (including me) but he still seems an odd choice for a restaurant. Imagine eating under a sign and accompanying art work that said "Birth Place of Paul Giamatti...or Steve Busecmi!"

Nyuk nyuk nyuk indeed.


(Note: My reinterpretation of the original art work is a simple pencil drawing seriously manipulated on my Ipad.)

*I really love that word.

The Not-So-Bad Wife

7/12/15

Anybody else have that crazy dream 

last night that they worked at 

Lockhart/Gardner and Diane got mad 

when you asked about another raise, 

especially since she says she's caught 

you napping on the job? No? That was 

just me? And then she decided to leave 

the law and go back to her first love,

the theatre. 

(Among the details I've left out for brevity's sake: packing up my desk and an enormous number of Christmas decorations, Andy Cohen standing on a window ledge pretending he's going to jump, Diane Lockhart [Christine Baranski] having words with Miranda Priestly.)

At Least Nine Lives

Another birthday for dear, talented, slightly, uh, eccentric Betty Buckley. I digitally painted the "Cats" makeup and a reinterpretation of Grizabella's costume right over top of the drawing I did of her last summer. 

Nobody Does It Better

Normally I only draw Carly Simon around St. Patrick's Day on account of the conjuring (see previous posts) but it's not every day she turns 70. 

In honor of this milestone I present my interpretation of the cover of my favorite Carly Simon album and the first one I ever owned, 1981's Torch. My copy is now autographed and framed. 

I was lucky enough to see Carly in one of her rare public performances when she taped a concert for Good Morning America back in the 90s. Luckier still to meet her on a handful of occasions, and she's never been less than gracious and warm, even when I did that thing New Yorkers are never supposed to do: stop a celebrity on the street. 

Happy Birthday and thank you Carly for all the music and the sweet memories. 

I'll Always Speak Well Of You...

4/24/15

It seems fitting to me that my last day in Brooklyn, indeed my last day as a citizen of New York, would fall on the birthday of Brooklyn's own mega-hyphenate (actress-singer-producer-director-philanthropist-etc, etc.) Barbra Joan Streisand. Soon, just like Barbra, Brooklyn will be in my rear view mirror (metaphorically of course, as I have no intention of ever owning a rear view mirror, unless maybe I find one with Two Faces.)

Thank you New York for all of the laughs, the countless shows and concerts, the game nights at Michael and Tim's, the countless evenings in movie houses, the baseball games, the brisket with extra carrots, the fountain at Lincoln Center, the misspent time and money at Tower Records and HMV, the baked potato ice cream loaf at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, the acting class with that crazy bitch from Cats, the random celebrity sightings, Shakespeare In The Park, the fireworks, the two City Hall weddings at which I was honored to be the only witness and guest, the #8 smoothie with vanilla yogurt and blueberries, and especially, most especially, for the friends I've made along the way. To paraphrase Taylor Swift, New York you and I are probably never, ever, ever getting back together, but I still love you, promise to visit, and will always speak well of you.

The Days and Nights of Blair Brown

This is a pencil sketch of  Tony winner and five time Emmy nominee Blair Brown that I put through a watercolor filter. It's based on a glamour shot she did about 25 years ago. She deserves so much more but all my art supplies are packed away except for my red pencil and my blue pencil.

During my time in New York, which is rapidly winding down, I've had the pleasure of seeing Blair on stage four times and meeting her briefly on two occasions. I enjoyed her in all of the plays, but her heartbreaking work in the musical "James Joyce's The Dead" was particularly memorable.

When I was in Costa Rica in 1990 I had an intense dream about Blair Brown that seemed to play out in real life a few days later.

In the dream I was in Central Park in New York with Blair. Someone tried to accost her and we wound up in a decrepit old police station filling out a report with an officer who typed our story on an old manual typewriter. The office couldn't get her name right and kept calling her Molly Dodd. Blair tried in vain to explain that she was an actress and that Molly Dodd was just a character she played, not  her real name.

A few days later I'm walking near Parque Central (yes, that's Spanish for Central Park) in downtown San Jose with my friend Ellen and her three year old son Michael (who is now a handsome and funny young man) when Ellen is spooked by two women who she thinks are following us and worries that they may try to snatch Michael.

We ditch the women and head into the park to collect ourselves. Ellen looks through her bag and realizes her wallet has been stolen. The next day we find ourselves in a decrepit old police station, I sort of remember it being in the lower level of a building, very dark like a basement.

A police officer takes Ellen's story down on an old manual typewriter. The officer has a hard time understanding why Ellen had two different last names. Ellen tries in vain to explain that she is an actress and her professional name is Ellen Kaplan but her married/legal name is Ellen Feder. The concept seems completely foreign to the officer but I think it sinks in eventually.

I'm not saying my dream (which also had Blair in a bright pink party dress talking about her pony pal Pokey) was prophecy exactly, but I couldn't help but see the similarities. And it's made all of my future dreams feel a little more real.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to the incredible and dreamy Blair Brown!

[Note: it's also Judy Davis's birthday but I've already drawn her at least 3 times so she gets a pass this year.]

The Greatest Star

March 26, 1964 Funny Girl opens at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. Last year I went all out to mark the 50th anniversary with about a dozen drawings; this year just one quick doodle.

Reach Out And Touch...

Diana Ross turns 71 today. Here's a little sketch of her singing in the wind and rain during her 1983 concert in Central Park. I was very impressed how she stayed out there in the rain and lightning trying to keep the crowd calm as they exited the park when the weather became too dangerous to continue. Me? I would have been back in my trailer at the first clap of thunder.