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?