So. Whaddya want to talk about? I've been home all day with my virus and the dogs and I don't really have any material to work with.
Here's what I did today:
* Said goodbye to Walt, as he took the car and started out for Santa Barbara.
* Had lunch
* Watched TV
* Checked internet stuff
* Talked with Jeri
* Fed the dogs
* Had dinner
* Watched more TV
and now here I am, ready to go to sleep at 12:30 a.m. and realizing that not only had I forgotten to write this entry, but I have absolutely. nothing. to. say. because I did absolutely nothing today.
However, this may have been a good thing, since my cough is much better tonight. It has moved from my throat and upper chest down into the lower lobes of my lungs where it is now what they call a "productive cough" and I find a bit more comfortable, since I'm not coughing as much. If this follows my annual pattern, it will probably remain here for then next couple of months and we will be quarantined on the ship for fear that I am carrying ebola. But main thing is that I am feeling better.
Someone on Facebook mentioned that she had been watching a new TV show called Forever. With all the hype that networks give new shows weeks before their pilot episode, I was surprised I had never of this one. It has only aired four episodes so I decided to give it a try. I found it charming.
The gimmick with this crime fighting duo (medical examiner, Henry Morgan and Detective Jo Martinez) is that the M.E. can't die. Sometime 200 years ago he was shot and tossed off a ship. Ever since then whenever he is "killed" he almost immediately comes back to life, always in water and always nude (the assumption being that his clothes go off into the afterlife or something).
At some point in the 1940s, when clearing a concentration camp, he came upon a baby whom he adopted. The baby had numbers tattooed on his arm. The baby is now old man Judd Hirsch, the guy who rescues him whenever he comes back to life, and the only one who knows his secret (like The Shadow's Margo Lane)
I think the reason I liked the show so much is that the actor who plays Henry (Ioan Gruffid -- with a name like that he surely must be from Wales) is suave and charming and the relationship between him and Martinez (Alana DeLa Cruz) is friendly without (yet) any of those messy sexual overtones.
The other reason I liked it so much is that it has hints of The Avengers, with some quirky plots. So I'm all caught up now and ready to watch next week's episode live.
The other thing I watched was PBS's Live from Lincoln Center, which was broadcasting The Nance, a play with music, starring Nathan Lane as Chauncey Miles. I had heard Lane interviewed about this show a long time ago and hoped to see it, so I was delighted to find it was being broadcast. Forget the Nathan Lane you have known these past few years. This is Lane as you probably have never seen him.
It is a dark comedy, set in 1930s New York. It's an amazing contrast to 2014, when all around the country gay couples are getting legally married this week.
The "nance" character was a flaming parody of a gay man, exaggeratedly camp and usually played by a hetero actor. For reference, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz and Edward Everett Horton in dozens of 1930s film comedies count as nances. The nance was a master of the double entendre, making people laugh "at the gap between what is known and what can be said," Lane's character says.
On stage Chauncey is outrageously funny and beloved (until Fiorello Laguardia started cleaning up things and drove gays underground), but off stage he is a closeted, bitter, lonely man, seeking assignations in the automat, where men cannot be seen talking together, so everything is done in code.
He briefly finds a relationship with a young man newly arrived in New York and a scene toward the end of the play where he agonizes over that relationship and why it didn't work out is very poignant.
It's an interesting education for younger people today to think how it was back in the day. Even I remember San Francisco in the 1950s with the newspaper printing pictures of men being loaded into paddy wagons and taken off to jail for immoral conduct (which could be something as simple as being inside a gay bar).
The playwright, interviewed about the controversial nature of this play says, "there is a young generation of queer writers who think we should be angry about (the nance stereotype) and hate it. But I look at it as visibility. I look at it as, they're almost always funny, and they almost always lift up any scene they're in. They're kind of strong, and they kind of say what they want to say and get it done." At the same time, he said, "I also know that that comes from a place of ridicule, a place of humiliation... so, the minute something is two things and they're the exact opposite, I'm drawn to it as a writer."
And lookee here...I've written a journal entry! Whoda thunk.
Here's what I did today:
* Said goodbye to Walt, as he took the car and started out for Santa Barbara.
* Had lunch
* Watched TV
* Checked internet stuff
* Talked with Jeri
* Fed the dogs
* Had dinner
* Watched more TV
and now here I am, ready to go to sleep at 12:30 a.m. and realizing that not only had I forgotten to write this entry, but I have absolutely. nothing. to. say. because I did absolutely nothing today.
However, this may have been a good thing, since my cough is much better tonight. It has moved from my throat and upper chest down into the lower lobes of my lungs where it is now what they call a "productive cough" and I find a bit more comfortable, since I'm not coughing as much. If this follows my annual pattern, it will probably remain here for then next couple of months and we will be quarantined on the ship for fear that I am carrying ebola. But main thing is that I am feeling better.
Someone on Facebook mentioned that she had been watching a new TV show called Forever. With all the hype that networks give new shows weeks before their pilot episode, I was surprised I had never of this one. It has only aired four episodes so I decided to give it a try. I found it charming.
The gimmick with this crime fighting duo (medical examiner, Henry Morgan and Detective Jo Martinez) is that the M.E. can't die. Sometime 200 years ago he was shot and tossed off a ship. Ever since then whenever he is "killed" he almost immediately comes back to life, always in water and always nude (the assumption being that his clothes go off into the afterlife or something).
At some point in the 1940s, when clearing a concentration camp, he came upon a baby whom he adopted. The baby had numbers tattooed on his arm. The baby is now old man Judd Hirsch, the guy who rescues him whenever he comes back to life, and the only one who knows his secret (like The Shadow's Margo Lane)
I think the reason I liked the show so much is that the actor who plays Henry (Ioan Gruffid -- with a name like that he surely must be from Wales) is suave and charming and the relationship between him and Martinez (Alana DeLa Cruz) is friendly without (yet) any of those messy sexual overtones.
The other reason I liked it so much is that it has hints of The Avengers, with some quirky plots. So I'm all caught up now and ready to watch next week's episode live.
The other thing I watched was PBS's Live from Lincoln Center, which was broadcasting The Nance, a play with music, starring Nathan Lane as Chauncey Miles. I had heard Lane interviewed about this show a long time ago and hoped to see it, so I was delighted to find it was being broadcast. Forget the Nathan Lane you have known these past few years. This is Lane as you probably have never seen him.
It is a dark comedy, set in 1930s New York. It's an amazing contrast to 2014, when all around the country gay couples are getting legally married this week.
The "nance" character was a flaming parody of a gay man, exaggeratedly camp and usually played by a hetero actor. For reference, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz and Edward Everett Horton in dozens of 1930s film comedies count as nances. The nance was a master of the double entendre, making people laugh "at the gap between what is known and what can be said," Lane's character says.
On stage Chauncey is outrageously funny and beloved (until Fiorello Laguardia started cleaning up things and drove gays underground), but off stage he is a closeted, bitter, lonely man, seeking assignations in the automat, where men cannot be seen talking together, so everything is done in code.
He briefly finds a relationship with a young man newly arrived in New York and a scene toward the end of the play where he agonizes over that relationship and why it didn't work out is very poignant.
It's an interesting education for younger people today to think how it was back in the day. Even I remember San Francisco in the 1950s with the newspaper printing pictures of men being loaded into paddy wagons and taken off to jail for immoral conduct (which could be something as simple as being inside a gay bar).
The playwright, interviewed about the controversial nature of this play says, "there is a young generation of queer writers who think we should be angry about (the nance stereotype) and hate it. But I look at it as visibility. I look at it as, they're almost always funny, and they almost always lift up any scene they're in. They're kind of strong, and they kind of say what they want to say and get it done." At the same time, he said, "I also know that that comes from a place of ridicule, a place of humiliation... so, the minute something is two things and they're the exact opposite, I'm drawn to it as a writer."
And lookee here...I've written a journal entry! Whoda thunk.
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