Violation

Quick note to my devoted fan base: both of you can rest easy - I've switched my password with such diabolical cleverness, no blathering hack can penetrate.
The world is safe again.

Devices and Desires

I feel liberated through tech chains. See, my loyalty to Verizon has paid off in a netbook, and a great deal more. For I did not want the Droid or the Berry or the iPhone, as I do not need to watch Beyonce when I leave my house to catch the bus or train, and I don't leave my house much freaking anyway. I do not even use my cell for that reason, and because it annoys the hell out of me.
MY THING was: how to not freak if Comcast gets drunk and my cable is out, and/or mosquitoes are blocking all the WiFi. Which means the netbook. Which means, as long as cell crap can fly through the air, I am connected. And what I love most is how, with my laptop and my Nook and my new netbook (her name is 7), and even with the clunky old emergency desktop boxed up in the closet, I am a superbly tech guy who will only, when absolutely necessary, carry the cell I pick up at Wal-Mart. This means I get to stay true to my old fart status.
Beat that, Beyonce.

Reality Check

What's happened to me? How can this be? I was cool with my Housewives switch shutting down, truly, But, now - I can't deal with my last Reality genre fix, Biggest Loser. I can't take it. I can't stomach (sorry) it any more, and I'm at a point where, if I see anyone crying anywhere and for any reason at all, like death or war or some shit, I will hit them. Ditto, snarling. You have ruined it for me, Jillian.
However, as with the Bravo whores, I think I know why my liking went south so hard. The housewives went too far in merchandising; BL went too far in timing. Hour shows are stretched to two hours, and they fill the time with delayed fanfare entrances Cher only dreams of. Then, extra and interminable minutes are packed with the VERY LAST THING this show needs: more tears.
So long, BL. If weeping and uttering trendy catchphrases chewed up calories, these folks would never need to step on a treadmill again.

Gone

Feeling blue. Ten minutes of a fabulous documentary on Broadway's past conjures memories, and I now must wax nostalgic.
My youth wasn't there for no Golden Age of Broadway, to be sure. But New York theater was still alive and still running along the tracks of the great days. I never saw the original Streetcar or Salesman. Never saw the first Kiss Me, Kate. But I was in time to catch Rex Harrison and Julie Harris in a Terence Rattigan play. I made it for Pippin (awful show, but fun), and the original and gorgeous Night Music. Deborah Kerr in a new Albee play. Opening week of Chorus Line, too. (Really terrible show but, Christ, it was an event.)
Understand: I saw a whole bunch of plain crap, too. Yet, as the city was different then, so too was the theater and there was a personal element to those streets that made even crummy shows worth the experience. Little things, like real, small tickets in different colors. Theaters still named the Morosco, the Belasco and the St. James. Prostitutes. The Marlboro man, puffing. People dressing up to see a show and no fucking kids anywhere, because going to the theater meant getting a sitter.
Now, to immerse myself fully in bitchy old man bathwater, it's pitiful. Nathan Lane as a great Broadway star? $400 per seat? No hookers, and theaters renamed in honor of corporate investors?
Sigh. It is obnoxious to say but: if you weren't there, you can't know what a kick it was.
PS Sorry for this indulgence. But I just feel SO CLOSE to y'all, now...

You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Reserve Oxygen Tank

In today's news is the rejoicing over the rescue of the Chilean miners. But the media, ever thinking, is predicting that these brave, if technically unproductive, men will soon suffer from the stress of no longer being in the limelight.
Well, then. The documentary Life After Tomorrow can help. It chronicles the despair faced by all the young girls who enjoyed fabulous fame in Annie, only to find themselves jobless and ignored as soon as another inch was grown or puberty struck. And this is, I swear, a real film.

I feel the miners should be first taken to the nearest Chilean touring company's production of Annie, and then be made to watch the documentary. Then they should be sent back into the mines and maybe actually get some real MINING done?

What Secretly Rots in Atlanta, Stays in Atlanta

Three years into this city, and I know a few things. I know that Marta is both as bad and as good as everyone says it is. I know that every other road in the whole town is named Something Ferry or Somebody's Fucking Mill. I know too that, in the throes of an ongoing economic rough spell, new nightclubs for hip-hop sorts keep sprouting up like triage centers on a battlefield.
I have also deduced that this city has no actual identity. At all. It is merely huge, it is sort of Southern at times but mostly not, and the only persona it boasts is that scraped together by frantic tourism advertisers and promoters. "Hey, Atlanta! You're something, Atlanta!" In the words of Ben Franklin, my ass.
Yet I am continually struck by one asset to this town. I have never lived in any city more amenable to the dumping of corpses. Every highway, every avenue, even quite a few midtown, is bordered by very deep and utterly overgrown ravines. It is a murderer's paradise. Pick a street, slow down the car, roll out the evidence.
Are you listening, ATL tourism?
PS My personal choice would be the fabulous trenches all around the NorthCreek office park lot.
Below: the view from every bus in the Marta fleet. Who even needs Hefty Bags?