I saw a show last night at The Public Theater. “How Theater Failed America.” It’s a monologue by Mike Daisey. I liked it a lot but I wouldn’t recommend it to too many people. The scope of the subject matter is very narrow. He tells some pretty compelling stories about how acting and the performing arts saved his depressed, suicidal ass, but the core of the show was about how regional theater in America is deteriorating. Repertory companies are becoming extinct. They are an economic impossibility. You’d enjoy the show if you were an actor, and you’d REALLY enjoy it if you were an actor in a repertory company. (Actually, I’m neither, and I enjoyed it very much. I don’t know what I’m saying half the time. It’s a fact!)

I have a tremendous amount of respect for monologists and, believe it or not, stand up comedians. It’s hard enough to walk out on a stage armed with a script and surrounded by your fellow actors. Imagine the terror of standing alone on a stage with only your words to save you. It’s a crazy notion and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do it.

I love The Public. It’s a beautiful building in my favorite neighborhood. Plus, they take risks. I’ve see some terrible theater there. Last month, CB and I saw a play by noted British playwright Caryl Chruchill that was so dull, a man in the first row fell asleep and started to snore. The entire show was a measly :45 minutes long but he couldn’t tough it out like the rest of us. He started to snore about :30 minutes in. It was one of the smaller theaters in The Public and since he was in the first row, the stage was only about 15 feet in front of him. Imagine that! Trying to remember your lines with a patron of the arts fast asleep and snoring right in your face! Finally, someone in the second row showed some mercy (for the actors), leaned forward and gave him a good, hard poke in the back of his head.

One evening, many years ago, I was waiting outside The Public for a habitually late friend and a pretty girl walked up to me, took a sandwich out of her purse, asked me if I was hungry and offered it to me. I’m not kidding! This really happened! And I didn’t look homeless. The sandwich was wrapped in a baggie. It wasn’t from a deli—she made it at home. I politely declined the sandwich, but she and I became good friends. Only in New York, folks! Mrs. Wife and I had our first date at The Public. We saw…a monologue, of course! The Public has been very good to me, although not in the way that Joseph Papp intended.

This is probably against every copywrite law known to man, but I was glancing through some Bukowski poems today and wanted to post this one. It’s so funny, and so good and so true. That guy really knew how to nail it down.

a consistent sort

at the track
the other day
during the
stretch run
the announcer screamed:
“HERE COMES PAIN!”

I had a bet on
Pain and
he finished
2nd,
one half-length
short.

he didn’t win
that time
but he will
win soon
and you can
bet on that
again and
again and
again.

get down
heavy

About a month ago I had to work over a weekend, so the Benevolent Dictators that employ me said I could have a comp day as a sop. Today was the first really nice day outside – plentiful warm sunshine – so I took my comp day and spent it in the Guggenheim and wandering around Central Park. If you are in Central Park on a weekday in the middle of the afternoon, you will bear witness to a remarkable phenomena. People are out and about, casually strolling, enjoying the day, with no particular place to go. A lot of people in New York just do not work. I have no idea how they generate income but I can tell you one thing, they are not sitting in a skyscraper at a specific desk for a set amount of time on the same five days of the week while trying to clandestinely check the baseball scores and the latest Bukowski titles up on eBay. It’s maddening to watch these people. I wish I could take the afternoon I had today and somehow turn it into a money making venture. Now THAT’S a career path worth following!

Last week, I walked down 7th Avenue, took a right on 30th St. and then walked over to 8th Avenue. Here’s what I passed while strolling down 30th St.:

Megaris Men’s Furs (Men’s furs, for Christ’s sake! Super Fly TNT must be back in town.)
30th St. Guitars
Image Anime (The go-to place in New York for Japanese anime mags.)
American Dental Center
The Recording & Rehearsal Arts Building
St. John the Baptist Catholic Church
D.P. Cigars (Proprietors of fine handmade cigars featuring the imported Bravo El Grande 9″ 62 Gauge. Viva!)
Urban Stages Theater (Theater for those whose political leanings are to the left of Mao.)
Rebel Nightclub (Live music, all night long.)
Antonio Oliveri Drop In Center (Yes, there are still junkies in Manhattan. This place hasn’t been COMPLETELY sanitized.)
The Molly Wee Pub and Restaurant

Without straying off this one block, you could conceivably find yourself smoking an expensive, hand rolled cigar in your full length mink coat while buying a new Gibson Les Paul and then taking in some guerilla theater after enjoying a hearty Irish meal and a pint o’ Guinness, during which you read the new issue of Megami. After the theater, you could stop and say a novena that the demo you just cut would get your band a Friday night slot, for which you would look razor sharp with your newly whitened teeth.

There’s more life in this measly 1/5th of a mile than there is in the whole expanse of my sleepy bedroom community in New Jersey.

On Sunday we went to a birthday party for a 3 year-old that was thrown by an insanely wealthy family. Not merely rich and comfortable mind you, but a degree of wealth that is rare, even for this prosperous country. Out in the suburbs, birthday parties for children have taken on the seriousness and grandeur of a presidential inauguration and they require the same degree of planning and careful execution as does a military operation. I believe that this unhealthy trend was born out of a parents’ insecurity about their place in society and, more than anything else, a lack of anything better to do.

I don’t know these people. I hadn’t met them before. In fact, Mrs. Wife barely knows them and we are still wondering why we received an invitation in the first place. However, as soon as we saw the address and realized that it was in the high net worth district, we thought we should go. If nothing else, it would give me a new benchmark for my own mediocrity. The “house” was across the street from Jon Bon Jovi’s “house.” (He has a pretty nice “house” too.) We pulled into the gated driveway and looked up to the top of a hill and saw, what appeared to be, a medium-sized hotel. Six year-old said, “Wow! They live in a palace!” My house, in contrast, has faded yellow vinyl siding and a driveway that floods when it rains hard. We drove up a winding driveway (that, I’m betting, doesn’t flood) through a—not kidding— vineyard where the—not kidding—Mexicans toiled in the field pruning the grapevines. We parked the car and, me feeling a bit like Jed Clampett, walked up a grand stone staircase to the main entrance to the palace. It was beautiful, but in a McMansionish kind of way. It wasn’t the kind of classic old mansion they could use as a location to film an adaptation of a Jane Austin novel. This is better suited to film one of Martha Stewart’s Caucasian tomes.

We were greeted at the door by The King himself and after some perfunctory introductions and an uncomfortable moment, I handed him the birthday gift and made my way into the dining room where a large round table in the center of the room was loaded down with food. It was only 10:30 the morning so they served a brunch. I am here to testify that I had The Most Amazing Bagel I have ever eaten. And I’ve eaten tens of thousands. I sliced open a pumpernickel bagel that was as big and soft as a pillow and loaded it down with lox, Sopressa Salami and whitefish spread. Heaven in every bite, my friends.

After stuffing my face and insuring that I smelled like a fishmonger with a caffeine addiction, I sought out The King to thank him for his hospitality. I told him how much I admired the painting above the fireplace and he said that he picked it up while honeymooning in Bali. Because of the insecurities, envy and deep feelings of inadequacy that I’ve been carefully nurturing my whole life, I badly wanted to dislike these people. I wanted to believe that, despite their ludicrous wealth, they were unhappy and lacked a soul. The fact is that both The King and The Queen could not have been nicer to my family and their two children seemed to be perfectly charming. I had no choice but to put my judgment and negative preconceived notions back on the shelf for another day and enjoy their hospitality. Drat.