It's Only Rock 'N' Roll

In the midst of his more-or-less rave of Stoppard's Rock 'N' Roll, Eric Grode gives us a spin through his iPod:

On my way to "Rock 'n' Roll," my digital music player shuffled its way through a song by the Pixies from 1990, one by Peter Bjorn and John from last year, and one by the Beatles from 1967. Kids I admired in college loved the Pixies, a coworker burned me a Peter Bjorn and John CD after taking a rare night off from watching his infant son to see them perform, and I was fascinated and slightly unnerved by my parents' "Magical Mystery Tour" album cover as a youngster.

I would never claim that these songs carved a permanent space in my worldview the way the Velvet Underground and the Plastics did for ["Rock 'n' Roll's"] Jan, or the way that Syd Barrett encapsulated a perhaps inevitable descent into obsolescence and confusion for Esme. They're just tunes with beats and harmonies, with all the comfort and chaos that implies. It's only rock 'n' roll, but I happen to like it quite a bit. Same with "Rock 'n' Roll."

Brantley, meanwhile, notices that the play has a heart, which is something I noticed as well.

Fancy That

I can't quite explain why but this Onion piece made me laugh like nothing in a long time.

Friday Mental-Health Break

A friend emailed this, says it's in the new Rolling Stone. Test your Beach Boys knowledge (this friend and I were once in a band that covered this tune, if you must know, though I sang it about an octave lower than the BBs):

Match the character in the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B." with his maritime mishap:

A. First Mate
B. Captain
C. Cook
D. Constable

1. Had his trunk broken into
2. Got drunk
3. Arrested the first mate
4. Caught a case of the "fits"

(But they left out my favorite line, a touching culinary detail. For a bonus, which one of the above "ate up all of my corn"?)

Friday Mental-Health Break

A friend emailed this, says it's in the new Rolling Stone. Test your Beach Boys knowledge (this friend and I were once in a band that covered this tune, if you must know, about an octave lower than the BBs):

Match the character in the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B." with his maritime mishap:

A. First Mate
B. Captain
C. Cook
D. Constable

1. Had his trunk broken into
2. Got drunk
3. Arrested the first mate
4. Caught a case of the "fits"

(But they left out my favorite line, a touching culinary detail. For a bonus, which one of the above "ate up all of my corn"?)

Cab Attacks Booth!

Well, not quite. As I walked back from lunch today I heard a loud noise coming from the intersection of 47th and 7th Ave. Apparently a taxi driver had somehow crashed his car through the wall around the site at Duffy Square, where the new TKTS Discount Booth is under construction, and was sitting at an angle just inside the enclosure (second photo, below). I could not, and still cannot, reconstruct how he must have made that move without overturning or causing any apparent casualties.

Alas, I didn't have a camera, but a TDF coworker made it to the site soon after. The picture above shows the breach in the wall, and the first picture below shows the car's position, post-breakthrough. The second aerial picture below that shows the scene after the car has been repositioned and the breached wall mostly put back together. The new Duffy Square hasn't even opened and already they're busting down the door for cheap tickets!
(Photos by Ray Atherton.)

Cab Attacks Booth!

Well, not quite. As I walked back from lunch today I heard a loud noise coming from the intersection of 47th and 7th Ave. Apparently a taxi driver had somehow crashed his car through the wall around the site at Duffy Square, where the new TKTS Discount Booth is under construction, and was sitting at an angle just inside the enclosure. I could not, and still cannot reconstruct, how he must have made that move. Alas, I didn't have a camera. The picture above shows the breach in the wall, and the first picture below shows the car's position, post-breakthrough. The second aerial picture below that shows the scene after the car has been repositioned and the breached wall mostly put back together. The new Duffy Square hasn't even opened and already they're busting down the door for cheap tickets!
(Photos by Ray Atherton.)

Lights, Ephemera, Action

Playgoer pulls an incendiary quote from New York's Q&A with Rock 'n' Roll star Brian Cox about American theatre being too much like television, but this quote jumped out at me more:

Is there anything you've brought back to theater from your time in the movies?
The great thing about film is that it has a disposable element. You do it and it's done. That's a great thing to bring back to the theater, because sometimes it can get a bit precious. Just play it through, get rid of it. Don't play the grace notes, don't worry about them.

I think I know what he's talking about; from an actor's point of view, acting in film and TV is quicker and dirtier, less precious. (Most folks in postproduction, on the other hand, would probably not share this attitude; "grace notes" is what they're paid to worry about). But of course, from posterity's point of view, it's theater that is, if not "disposable," then certainly ephemeral, while it is film and television that, for better or worse, will always be with us, as much as we may wish the reverse were the case.