Where to Go When You Gotta Go

The answer to the most frequently asked question over the years regarding the Screening Room is a number:

Ninety-nine.

Question most frequently asked in the Screening Room: “Restroom?”

I point the way, “Yes, we have two. Use either one.”

If we had just one more seat, we would be required by Massachusetts law to add a third restroom. And if we still made distinctions, the addition would be for women.

As an arts cinema, our offerings of independent, foreign, and documentary films have always drawn far more women than men. We always laughed at the term “chick flicks.” The Screening Room founders were never offended by it because they felt that films full of car chases and explosions were for the birds–and they knew that women were not chicks.

But their clever, wordless placement of photos–one of Humphrey Bogart, the other of Lauren Bacall–on the two doors with but one toilet each behind them in the discreet corner to the side of the screen failed to anticipate a problem on busy days and nights: When the credits rolled, there would be a line of five or six women waiting to use one restroom while the other remained idle.

When I mentioned this years ago, I was reminded that there were no signs saying “men” or “women,” just the pictures. That’s when I started telling audiences to use either one, adding: “All we ask is that you leave the seat at 45 degrees.”

Now we have new signs. Mass-produced, artless white lettering on charcoal gray, as uniform and sterile as anything you’d find in an industrial supply store, they show stick figures for men, women, and bi or trans people. Hurts to look at them, but they’ve been placed underneath Humphrey and Lauren who remain at eye-level. So I keep my head up.

Maybe I’m looking for the past when I compare the Screening Room’s restroom photos to clever designations found elsewhere. Right here on Plum Island, the Beachcoma’s two doors say “Inboard” and “Outboard.” At the legendary Rein’s Delicatessen which boasts a New York menu in the middle of Connecticut, the doors say “Manhattan” and “Queens” at the end of a corridor you enter under a sign that says “Flushing.” And I can’t count the number of seafood restaurants with doors saying “Gulls” and “Buoys.”

Sometimes I wonder if casinos–places in which I will never set foot–might have rooms labeled “Levers” and “Slots,” and I’m braced for the day I walk into a coffee shop that caters to the hi-tech crowd and see “Plugs” and “Sockets.”

Today, I stopped at the Sturbridge Coffee House for the first time in over a year. Just one restroom there, as they have way less than 49 seats, but that might change considering the size of the room they are adding. I didn’t walk in to take any measurements, settling instead for the sign posted outside the door:

Please excuse our appearance while we try to figure out what we’re doing.

Went into the restroom without noticing the sign on the open door, but a sign on the underside of the toilet’s cover sure caught my eye. Have I ever before seen a sign so positioned? Have you?

It has one of those red circles with the slash through it, forbidding what? Move closer. Under the slash, you’ll see the illustration of a man diving: “Do Not Dive!” The finer print warns of shallow water and serious injury, but if you do dive, it’s at your own risk.

This place serves sandwiches as delicious as its humor–with potato chips they make themselves that make Cape Cod and Utz seem like imposters. I was seated within sight of the restroom door on which was one of those dull charcoal rectangles that has me rolling my eyes in Newburyport. Instead of three, this has four figures, and the fourth is not stick, but the curvy shape of Casper the friendly ghost, except with the face of a space alien and the expression of Edvard Munch’s Scream.

Nice visual, but it was the text that made my day:

Whatever, just wash your hands.

-30-

No idea where this is, but it’s from a collection that’s good for a few laughs:
https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/2087/13-Funny-And-Bizarre-Bathroom-Signs-Seen-Around-The-World

Save Which Date?

At the Screening Room, first thing I do when I open up is take care of the mail and any flyers from community groups put through the transit for us to post in our window for public display.

Today I picked up one that began, “On Christmas Night,” by far the largest line on the 8.5 x 11 sheet. Next line, half that size, says, “Immerse yourself in seasonal favorites.” Wonderful! We can tell that it’s a concert. So far, so good.

Next line begins, “Friday, December 8…”

Cut! I read these three lines more times than I care to admit, wiping my glasses once and wiping my eyes twice or thrice. I even turned it over and looked closely at the back side. The rest of the flyer was clear enough. It was also inviting enough to make me consider buying a ticket—for what, I will not say because I do not want to embarrass these good people.

Nothing like this has ever happened before. Only two items that come to mind are barely related:

Years ago, one local arts organization prepared an elegant flyer, luscious in color, dynamic in design. The dark blue print was gorgeous against the coffee-colored background, and delightful to read when I put it on the counter. In the window, it might as well have been a wet brown paper bag.

Then there was the woman who showed up an hour late because she forgot to set her clock forward for Daylight Saving. Sounds like a minor oversight, but the fact that it happened on a Wednesday made her the woman of my dreams. Unfortunately, that didn’t occur to me until I had laughed long enough for her to turn around, walk down the street, and disappear around the corner.

Today, while making popcorn and getting the projector ready, I spent the next 15 minutes wracking the muscle-memory of my Yankee ingenuity for a way to alter the Christmas Day, Dec. 8 flyer with a sharpie and/or a pair of scissors without making a mess, but thought better to just let pedestrians on State Street figure it out as they walk by.

I suppose that changing “On” to “Before” would not have been too ugly, but I was reluctant to mess with anyone’s preferred prepositions. Then it occurred to me to write a little ditty I could post on social media and that would eventually gain their attention–as well as the attention of anyone who looks at posts on walls of numerous Newburyport businesses.

Of course, on November 29 as I write, it’s too late for them to change the present poster, but in the future, they might make the conversion from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. As we often hear:

Better 441 years late than never!

-30-

Can’t recall who took this pic, but it was taken in 2020 because that note on the door reads: “Shuttered for the duration of the plague.” The last window next to the barber shop was where we put community notices, but now they go on the two windows in the recessed doorway.

Know When to Walk Away

Sometimes, to escape concerns and worries over politics, I turn to the ever-engaging, always exciting entertainment of sports.

With a glut of pro and college football games on the tube throughout the long Thanksgiving weekend, I was, well, frankly thankful to have picked up a bug that kept me indoors downing high-pulp orange juice, hot cocoa, hot toddies with apple cider vinegar in lieu of alcohol, and a litre of Kahlua to atone for that lieu.

None of which goes well with trying to convince, as I often try, the American public that, no, it is not all politicians that are bad, but some; not all of Congress or Washington that is indifferent to basic needs, but half.

What a futile waste of time! Worse, I’m asking others to waste their time paying attention to who does what. Worst, I’m contradicting the easy, simple answers of third parties and term limits that allow people to think they are being discerning and responsible while remaining inattentive to exactly who does exactly what in DC.

As a battle-cry, “Get rid of them all!” has far more velocity and force than “Attention must be paid.”

What better place for me to retreat, then, than the world of sports where velocity and force are often the point–often the deciding factor between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat?

This weekend I enjoyed nine of ten games, most of them going down right to or near the wire. Iowa State vs. Kansas State had the added attraction of being played in a steady snowfall with ten touchdowns, three of them running plays over 70 yards.

That was an annual contest dubbed “Farmageddon” that followed the intense in-state rivalry of Washington State vs. the University of Washington, or “U-Dub” as my source in Seattle tells me. That annual matchup is known as “The Apple Cup.”

Hurts to acknowledge that Washington, mostly on the eastern side of the Cascades, grows more apples than all other 49 states combined. Hurts even more for this once-upon-a-few-harvests-a-lifetime-ago New Hampshire apple-picker to think that you could throw in two more New Englands and maybe a New York and still not equal the output in the Columbia River Valley.

Coincidentally, the only reject in the lot of tight, well-played games this weekend was the New England Patriots vs. the New York Giants. If that one had a name, it might well be “The Toilet Bowl.”

Here in New England, we sports fans are freaking out at how our not-long-ago invincible Patriots have plummeted from perennial contenders and six-time champions to the doormat of the National Football League.

Doormat? More like laughing stock to the sadists who take their pleasure at seeing the mighty brought low.

Both monikers were widely applied to the NY Giants from the beginning of the season, so both should accompany a loss suffered by a hopeless team at their hands. Use whatever metaphor you want to describe the NE Patsies–including that of a deflated football if you happen to be an Indianapolis Colts fan–but I’m already wondering if the team itself is the metaphor I’ve been looking for all along.

Many fans I’m hearing and overhearing want to get rid of the entire team and start anew. If you see only the 2-9 record and a few blowout scores, that might make sense.

But if you look closer, you see a team that scores less than 14 points per game and allows 22.5. If you adjust that for the points scored by or set up by a team’s defense intercepting passes and recovering fumbles, and for points scored by opponents’ defenses off of a hapless quarterback’s handouts and air-mailed gifts, both numbers do down.

In other words, the offense is even worse that the numbers show, but the defense looks quite good. The scores of the last two losses against bottom-feeder teams, the Colts and the Giants, are more indicative: 6-10 and 7-10. Didn’t keep track of it, but I know that at least one of the other teams’ two touchdowns was a pass interception.

Fortunately, most New England fans recognize this. We are good fans who pay attention to detail, know the game, know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.

If only we were citizens as we are fans.

-30-

Abu Sama III ran through the snow for 276 yards and three touchdowns for the Iowa State Cyclones vs. the Kansas State Wildcats in “Farmageddon.”
https://www.postregister.com/sports/pro/iowa-state-relies-on-big-plays-fourth-down-stop-for-snowy-42-35-win-over/article_0070bcd6-e16e-53a7-ab85-2800c5c6b043.html

Going with the Furniture

All those years rolling my eyes and making fun of holiday newsletters that sum up a family’s year and are tucked into Christmas cards, and I’m about to write a blog doing exactly that.

Before you remind me that December has yet to begin, let me remind you that we’ll soon be too busy reading these things to be writing them.

I’d say “holiday cards,” but I don’t want to imply that people who celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa do anything so ridiculous. Maybe they do, but I’ll stay in my lane. And in my own defense, I’m not stuffing this into any envelope.

Then again, I wrote such things back in the 80s long before I ever got on-line and wrote emails, let alone blogs. And I did stick them into Christmas cards. Like this blog, they had headlines that offered the highlight of the year.

For better: “The Year of E-flat” described what musicians call developing a “chop.” In this case, a knack for improvising in minor keys with rapid fire movement for notes that previously threatened carpal tunnel syndrome. By far my best year on the streets.

Or worse: “Wear Sunscreen” focused on a visit to a dermatologist who insisted I return to his office at the end of the day, refusing to take no for an answer. First sample came back positive, but he took a second cut which showed he got it all the first time. I’d say that having someone save your slap-happy life is worth a narration.

Whether or not a diagnosis of melanoma belonged in a Christmas greeting is another matter, and so is 2023, which I will ever remember as the year of:

Going with the Furniture

A very unusual year, due mostly to the sale of the house aside me, and therefore of mine which, per the local zoning board, was part of the deal.

Luckily I went with the furniture without any anticipated raise in rent. Not only that, but the new people, a 40-ish couple, decided to absorb the electric bill, so expenses went down. This may have been due to the gutting and rebuilding of a re-imagined house next door. Price was that I was living next door to a construction site from mid-spring into the fall. Very little company, but I sure spent a lot of time on the beach.

This happened hard on the heels of the sale of the Screening Room to another 40-ish couple. After scraping by through the limitations of Covid, they decided they needed a night off once a week. I got the call. To this day, faithful patrons are still showing up for the first time since the Ides of March, 2020, and they express surprise when they see me.

That’s when I started saying, “I went with the furniture.”

Not sure the expression applies to my other employer, but the founders of the fudge company just it turned over to their children, a 40-ish trio. For them, the furniture I go with one day a week is behind the wheel of a Ford Transit.

Meanwhile, my mid-fortyish daughter and her pushing-fifty husband relocated from California to Massachusetts’ South Shore where I now go for the holidays. My two grandkids may well think I’m part of the furniture. With Generation X now in control of every part of this Boomer’s life, Lachlan and Briana may be right.

Back in the spring and early summer, I had a few rendezvous with a friend who lives in Portland. She’s a member of the Appalachian Mountain Trail Club, Maine chapter, where she found a book titled, Beer Hiking in New England, linking trails with nearby brewpubs. How’s that for delight at the end of the trouble?

Well, there’s a few of them on the southern Lobster Coast and a few more in southeast New Hampshire. Must admit that she’s alternately annoyed and amused by my wanting to stop and sit on every bench along those trails, but I don’t go anywhere without furniture.

Strange to think that in my last busking years before the Covid shutdown, I was adamant about never taking a seat while busking. When I complained about sore feet in the last few years, a friend or relative would suggest I bring a folding chair. I knew they didn’t mean it as such, but I took it as an insult: “I will retire before I sit down!”

Must have been quite a shock to people who also heard me declare, “Death may beckon, but retirement does not.” Do vertical graves exist?

Covid, of course, made all that a moot point, though I’m lately considering coming out of retirement next spring. That’s due to the response I gained in Salem this fall playing in the street as a warm-up for a witch-trial re-enactment. If I could do that in uncomfortable period-shoes, imagine what I can do in high-cut Pumas.

As well as at the Renaissance faire, although I did play much more this season with the Buzzards Bay Buccaneers, and when sitting in with them, I sit down with them. Much better for the musical conversation between wind and string instruments to have each players’ ears on the same level. As for the visuals when I join, the name does change to Buccaneer Bay Buzzards.

Not sure if a wooden plank with no backing qualifies as furniture, but it has prolonged my life at that faire. If so, I am yet again going with the furniture, already signed in for 1524.

At first I resisted the phrase. To me it sounds like, and therefore almost implies, “going with the flow.” That’s a phrase, a concept, an attitude that I have always detested. Ditto “Let it slide.” I lose respect for people who say it. Let things control you. Make no effort. An admission of apathy at best, cowardice at worst, laziness at length. But that’s my Sixties’ schooling, an attitude that anticipates injustice 24/7/365.

As Dylan furnished it, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. What on this burning planet would make me think that the choice to sit or stand has anything to do with the courage to change the things I can? Or that returning to a job–or cancelling a move from Plum Island which I never wanted to make–is anything unwise to accept?

Finally, I’m young enough to know the difference, and there’s such serenity in sitting down.

-30-

A musical conversation with the Buzzards Bay Buccaneers at King Richard’s Faire: Bob Littera, Irish bouzouki; Kelly Reed-Hathaway, autoharp; some other guy, sopranino recorder. Photo by Triple-G Photography.

A monoblog. (A blogolo?) Photo by Paul Shaughnessy.

Old Dog, New Trick

Two months ago, egged on by a mid-life crisis–or in my case, about a four-fifths-life crisis–I joined a theater troupe in Salem.

Called “immersive theater,” Cry Innocent begins outdoors when a town crier delivers the news–from the old world, from nearby villages, from the frontier, from the docks–and is interrupted by a breathless constable who delivers a warrant for the arrest of an accused witch. She’s milling around among the gathered crowd, and is soon arrested.

From the mid-90s into the mid-teens, I watched that scene from my busking spot on the Essex Street Mall, pausing for a 15-minute break before the actors took the play–and an audience–into Salem’s Old Town Hall.

Sounds like a case of couldn’t beat them so I joined them, but I stopped busking Salem a few years before the pandemic. What brought me back was a grapevine notice–via the Renaissance faire–that they were short of male actors needed to burn the witch (or so I read into what I read). Musicians were also mentioned, so perhaps I might get away with a line or two when not piping up a storm.

There’s a reason I’m a wind musician.

My hope for a small role might have been raised when the script offered a few, but it was soon dashed when I learned of “doubling.” In this case it was tripling, as three roles I might have easily delivered were “tracked” into one. Another track had four, and so two actors each had a coat-rack backstage, in view of the audience, with coats, cloaks, aprons, scarves, and hats to give the appearance of different characters from scene to scene.

I was to open as a timid, nervous-wreck of a servant and close as a bold, plain-speaking farmer–with a blase, above-it-all Puritan minister in between.

But there were plenty of actors–real actors and drama students from Salem State and other nearby schools–to cover the roles, and I couldn’t help but notice that they needed to schedule two others to handle all the other necessities, such as the “sweep” (talking up an audience on Essex Street), the box office, and sitting at the rear of the hall to lead people to restrooms and escort parents with fussy babies to a “Quiet Room.”

My plan from the start was to play full-tilt on Essex Street–directly across from my old busking spot–for at least 45 minutes before each show, and then position myself where the town crier would appear at least ten minutes before he rang the bell. In effect, I opened the show. In fact, on several occasions, I was able to spot the crier’s approach, jump an octave to hit a final note, doff my cap, take a bow, and say aloud:

“Ladies and gentleman, it is my great honor–and much to my great relief–that I give you (pause, flourish of the arm) the Town Crier!”

My ulterior motive, of course, was to convince them that I was of more value as a musician than I would be on stage. It worked. To my greatest relief, I remained an understudy to the end of the run, although, to be fair to myself, I did learn all of three characters’ lines. By the end of it, my fear was more of the transitions. How quickly could I go from a minister’s robes into a farmer’s apron?

Mind you, this all happened two or three days a week while I was spending weekends piping up storms at King Richard’s Faire. Both gigs are athletic events, and, not to play the role of Captain Obvious here, but my nimble and quick are long gone. There’s a reason I haven’t played Salem in recent years. I barely play Newburyport anymore.

Be that as it may, the two months were withering, and November couldn’t come soon enough. What I didn’t know was that Cry Innocent ran a full week after Halloween, partly for school field trips. So, when the last show ended, I breathed a huge sigh of relief–only to have a funny thing happen while saying farewell on my way out the door:

“Hey Jack, wanna play Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol?”

Added to that was the mention that the director “needs Fezziwigs.” Perhaps I should have taken more note of the plural, but all I thought was that it’s a small role and I know the story quite well. Also, I could crave January just as I did November, with a few mostly idle months to follow.

In the week before the first audition, I would learn that, like Cry Innocent, this production is also immersive–so immersive that Scrooge and Marley take the audience on a trolley ride from the Gallows Hill Museum & Theater to a cemetary a few blocks away for the Christmas Future scene. That much made me smile.

Then I realized that, also like Cry Innocent, characters are tracked, and that, after playing Fezziwig in the Christmas Past scene, I’d be changing outfits, getting into a car, and arriving at the cemetary while the audience watched Christmas Present and shed tears for Tiny Tim before boarding the trolley to watch me as Joe, the owner of a pawn shop, purchase bits an’ pieces that Missy and Mrs. Dilbert–or Belle and Ghost Past who rode with me–hawked from Scrooge’s rooms after the old cheapskate croaks. The thought of doing it was as breathless as that sentence to describe it.

Watched all this in the rehearsals, and it’s great stuff. Bad news for you is that all 102 scheduled performances are already sold-out–pretty much sold out as soon as they went on sale in September.

By all means, keep it in mind for next year, but let me qualify my enthusiastic review: Great stuff when the other actors at the rehearsals play Fezziwig/Joe. No I’m not being modest, just realistic:

The rehearsals drew more actors than I think the producers anticipated. By the second night I counted five others for the Fezziwig track. All of them are experienced with far better instincts and more of a knack for acting than I–I who last performed in a play in 1973. Some are theater students committed to the art. For all of them, it’s some meaningful part of their livelihood. For me, it’s a lark.

Lest I sound impossibly selfless, there’s the practical consideration: Driving into Salem late weekday afternoons, whether through Beverly or Danvers, takes 90 minutes to go 25 miles. And even more practical than that is that this Jack no longer jumps over candlesticks.

At the end of the second night, I told the producer that I didn’t mind sitting out. In fact, I suggested that she not schedule me at all, but should call me in an emergency, as I do know the lines. I also mentioned that I’d be glad to hear of any musical role they might add, as they did enjoy my riffs on “Deck the Halls” and “The Holly & the Ivy.”

But local theaters run on shoe-string budgets, and while 102 sell-outs might raise your eyebrows, the 35-seat capacity of a Salem trolley–not to mention the ambitious overhead–should lower them again.

Did I waste two nights by getting roped into this? Not at all. Salem’s theater scene is flush with great people, young and old, a few–very few–almost as old as I. I’m fortunate to have gotten to know them and will have my eye on listings for future productions that might–possibly, hopefully–include an aging piper.

-30-

On any given day, you might find four entirely different actors ready to perform *Cry Innocent*, but surrounding me on this day, clockwise from top left: Colin LaMusta with the crier’s bell, Caleb Palmer with the arrest warrant, Melinda Kalanzis with testimony, and Mikayla Bishop with an attitude. Photo by Artistic Driector Kristina Stevnik.

A Force of Friendship

As First Lady from 1977 to 1981, Rosalynn Carter organized “The Friendship Force.”

Based on her own idea that she was able to launch in Georgia when her husband was governor, it was an exchange program for American cities with cities around the world.

Chartered planes took residents from one city where they would stay, not in hotels, but with host families. Hosts and their guests were matched according to what they had in common, usually their occupation, and guests would go to their hosts’ places of employment, schools, recreation centers. That other city would send the same number of people to the first, with all of the same arrangements.

In 1979, I was a resident of Bismarck, North Dakota, where about 200 of us signed up for ten days in Hamburg, Germany, home of namesake Otto Von Bismarck. I stayed with an editor of Der Spiegel, which may be the largest circulating magazine auf Deutsch.

Highlight of our stay was a day-trip that required about a half-hour train ride out to the Bismarck estate. All of us North Dakotans and all of our German hosts were there to pick from the platters of endless trays of shot-glasses filled with schnapps. Ever since, I’ve shaken my head at the stereotype of Germans as uptight, joyless people—which I would come to realize was the point of Rosalynn Carter’s Friendship Force.

Back in North Dakota, all of us had high praise for the experience, urged friends and family in other cities to see about starting one, and, as you can see here, still reminisce about it while wishing it might be re-created. Today, I’m sure that all of us will recall with gratitude the woman who made it all possible.

May she rest in peace. No one worked harder or longer or in more imaginative ways for it.

-30-

A Laugh on the Dark Side

Years ago, a woman walked into the lobby of the Screening Room while I was bouncing up and down the four steps to the projector’s booth trying to determine the right level of sound for a film opening that evening.

Since the steps are visible right behind the ticket counter, she faced me there when, once satisfied, I took my position as ticket-taker.

“Hop-Frog!” she laughed.

“Huh?” I asked.

“The character in the Edgar Allan Poe story, ‘Hop-Frog’! You remind me of Hop-Frog!”

“I’ll have to read it,” I smiled.

As way leads onto way, I never did read “Hop-Frog,” and some 25 years passed before I trekked a short distance up the Maine coast to see Poe: Tales of Fear & Suspense.

Much like Robert Frost: Fire & Ice, which I caught in 2021,* this is dinner-theater a few miles inland from Ogunquit at the Clay Hill Farm where a chef prepares green beans as if they might be the main course. I’ll leave the taste of seared salmon to your buds’ imagination.

Also a one-man show, Poe, like Frost, is resurrected by Kirk Simpson–who is also my liege, King Richard at the Renaissance faire so named. For all the similarites, the performances take divergent roads: While Frost offers poems that reveal much of his life, Poe selects stories that dramatize characters and conflicts of a dark imagination. Frost is autobiography; Poe is selected works.

But the performance is not at all free from Poe’s own demons. Simpson, in character, begins with a brief description of Poe’s wife, Virginia, a first-cousin half his age, just 13 when they married–and 24 when she died of tuberculosis. Simpson’s re-creation of grief leads seamlessly into “Annabelle Lee,” Poe’s lamentation haunted by “a high fever and jealous angels” and punctuated by quiet coughs into a napkin.

With that as an appetizer, a menu of seven stories is atop each table, along with those for food and drink, offering three “audience choices.” For the first, Simpson took a spin-wheel among the tables, chose a woman to spin it, and then annouced the result:

“Hop-Frog”!

What makes Poe so vivid, so memorable, is Simpson’s theatricality. As much as facial expressions and inflections of voice, he takes care of–and I’d say advantage of–every move. For Hop-Frog, a jester who outwits (and then some!) a king and a court who ridicule his misshapen leg, that’s an exaggerated, lunging gait. That woman at the Screening Room wasn’t far off.

Apart from her comparison, “Hop-Frog” strikes me as the evil-twin of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” published 12 years earlier. Hans Christian Andersen offered something family-friendly, and Poe, very much in character, flipped it to the dark side.

Simpson also has a way of enunciating “ourang-outang,” the oft-used joke-of-a-word in the story’s subtitle, that should remind Poe fans of his fascination with–and disdain for–P.T. Barnum. Couldn’t help but hear the story as a source of influence for magazine pieces years later by Herman Melville and Mark Twain who both shared that fascination and disdain.

After “Hop-Frog” reached its fiery conclusion, Simpson brought his spin-wheel to me. Hoped for “The Masque of the Red Death” for its relevance to the Covid outbreak, but Simpson announced the result aloud: “The Pit & the Pendulum”!

True to my namesake’s occupation, I added, equally aloud: “I apologize!”

Never would have thought that “Pit” or the following “Tell-Tale Heart” could be cause for laughter. Neither features a court jester. But Simpson plays the role of maniacal narrator as well as he plays jovial king and rueful poet, and we often laugh against our better judgement. All while retaining a sense of terror. Exit Andersen and Twain, enter Hitchcock and Serling.

We may have missed the other four stories on the menu, but during intermission, Simpson, as if a demon sent by Poe, circulates among the diners wearing a masque of death–such as we see at the renfaire–scraping a brick with a trowel, the unlikely tool to cover up murder in “Cask of Amontillado.” He also bantered somewhat about “The Black Cat,” so only “House of Usher” was left entirely unpainted.

The show ends with “The Raven,” so iconic it’s the only literary work to have a professional sports team named for it. Yes. we’ve all heard it, but never so vividly as from an actor who can induce sound effects–tapping, gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door–and a chorus of “Nevermore” from some 30 listeners. Simpson puts us in that chamber.

To enter and take a seat, keep your eye on Clay Hill Farm’s 2024 schedule (caption below) for what it bills as its “autumnal tradition.”

Meanwhile, my eye will be on the Screening Room door to tell one patron what I think of her comparison. We had another exchange over that same counter, around that same time, when she laughingly told me that she found my Daily News columns “sardonic.”

Apparently, I reminded her of Hop-Frog in more ways than one.

-30-

Before it appears again next fall, you might consider Simpson’s one-man performances of Dickens’ *Christmas Carol*, *Frost: Fire & Ice*, and similar presentations of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain:
https://www.clayhillfarm.com

*My blog-review of Robert Frost: Fire & Ice:

Barding Around

Deliver Us from Inattention

As with so many other bits and pieces of American history, we all hear of the Salem witch trials but very little of the details.

Took me fifty years after my college graduation–from Salem State, of all places–to learn that accused witches were at times put to “The Lord’s Prayer Test.” And this was only because I joined a Salem theater troupe which performs a re-enactment of a trial every fall.

In the words of Rev. John Hale, based on an actual transcript from 1692:

It is believed that a witch may not be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer without some deprivation or amputation to the text, as it may be that the Lord will not suffer a witch to blaspheme in this manner.

Despite the passive It is believed and the mincing may not be and may be, the claim appears simple and straightforward.

The accused Bridget Bishop insists she can say it, but indeed deprives the text of the very phrase most directly opposed to the devil: Deliver us from evil.

When we opened, I was surprised to see a schedule that went a week past Halloween, ending on weekdays. Turned out that those were to accommodate school field trips. It was during one of those shows that Goodwife Bishop finished with Amen and, before Rev. Hale could note the amputation, the audience burst into cheering applause.

The actor was convincing, and they thought she nailed it.

Who today doubts that we live in a country that has been delivered into evil?

Yes, that is in the passive voice, but it is a rhetorical question that really asks: Who’s to blame? Or, in the context of the Lord’s Prayer: Who led us into temptation?

Convincing actors? Those who exploit a public that sees only headlines without the details of cause and effect?

On the day following the end of Cry Innocent‘s run, with the applause for an amputated text still nagging me, a friend may have updated the question to 2023:

I swear, all people can see is the rise in the prices of food and gas, things over which Biden has no control. Meanwhile, employment is the highest it’s been in decades and wages have risen 37% since Covid restrictions were over.

As appalling as the reality is, his claim is appealing because he does not cast blame at some other side. Instead, his emphasis is on “people.” He names the culprit twice.

Regarding one side of the American divide, it’s too easy to attribute the appeal of “Make America Great Again” and “I alone can do it”–or the appeal of candidates who keep speaking in superlatives and using words such as “tough” and “strong”–to the gullibility that results from our lack of attention.

Ditto the idea of a wall on our border or an end to any and all regulations that may limit what we can own or do–with the glaring exceptions of women’s reproductive rights and minorities’ rights to vote.

Meanwhile, the other side–my side–is blind to it. Too many of my liberal friends are tempted by calls for term limits: We already have a way to remove office holders. It’s called the next election. Why forfeit our ability to keep those whose work is beneficial?

And by third parties: Until ranked choice voting is in place, or unless we are willing to take the time for run-offs, any third party bid will divide voters who consider themselves “independent” and “discerning” while delivering an election to the extremists who have turned a political party into a cult of personality–no matter how many indictments he has or guilty verdicts he may have.

Like it or not, an American presidential election is a numbers game. The extremists will remain united with a formidable number enhanced by the Electoral College. A Democratic coalition offers a number that can beat it. A coalition that splinters–No Labels, Green, Progressive–cannot.

Like so many conservatives, many liberals and a whole lot of in-betweens see and hear only the surface, nothing below it. Simple answers, nothing complex. Sensation, no dull details or explanations of cause/effect relationships.

Superficial, simple, sensational. All of these make for the plot and dialogue of an ongoing national drama in which the actors are convincing, and too many of us are willing to believe they nail it.

-30-

Here we have the execution of an accused witch. If there’s any analogy to be made to American elections–Is the witch the voter or is she truth? Is the rope the ballot or public opinion?–my only suggestion is that the hand in the lower left is the informed voter. Someone not even in the picture, waving in frustration, futility, and failure.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/salem-witch-trials-causes

Anatomy of a Marriage

Classified as a thriller, Anatomy of a Fall is as thrilling a courtroom drama as ever reached a verdict.

Or did it? From the opening scene of a ball bouncing down a flight of stairs to the denoument of a woman collapsing on a couch, truth is never certain and, as one critic puts it, “the power is granted to the audience to determine [the film’s] true outcome.”

Or as one woman quipped while leaving the Screening Room, “I knew that the ending would be inconclusive.” I could read that reaction on most faces as two audiences filed out on Wednesday, as well as the reaction summed up by another patron’s declaration, “That was powerful!”

Powerful describes both the writing and acting, which combined to win the Palme d’Or at this year’s 76th Cannes Film Festival. Don’t be surprised if Sandra Huller’s can’t-take-your-eyes-off-her performance gains an Oscar nomination–a turn sure to amaze patrons of the Screening Room and other arts cinemas who recall her impish performance in the eccentric 2016 German film, Toni Erdmann.

Another Canne award went to Messi playing Snoop, the dog who chased the ball down the stairs and joined Huller on that couch. Like the donkey and the dog in The Banshees of Inisherin, a film with metaphorical intent much like Fall, Snoop plays a vital part in the story–as well as serving as a recurring focal point for 11-year-old Daniel (a riveting performance by Milo Machado Graner) to find out what happened to his father.

Or to decide what happened, as his caretaker hopes to convince him when he begs for her help in what might be the film’s climax. Daniel’s visual impairment adds an odd, Oedipal twist. His father takes the blame for it; his mother casts it. Did dad fall, jump, or get pushed? Accident, suicide, or murder? And since Mom was the only one home, she automatically becomes a suspect, and the anatomies of a fall and death become what could well be called “Anatomy of a Marriage.”

The intensity never ends, which is why I hedge with the verb, might be. As the caretaker tells the boy, when the truth is unknowable, you have to decide what’s true. She could have been talking about half the things we find on any newspaper’s front page.

Co-writer and Director Justine Triet’s title is a nod to Otto Preminger’s 1959 classic, Anatomy of a Murder, often ranked as the best courtroom drama of all time, and her film is as thoughtful, intricate, and emotional.

More than Murder, and far more than Banshees, this film this most resembles 2009’s Doubt which gained four Oscar nominations in the acting categories for Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Viola Davis, and Amy Adams. The theme is similar and the acting just as intense.

At 150 minutes and with the language split about evenly between English and French, this is far from any cinematic equivalent of a burger and fries with a bottle of light beer. But if you have an appetite for a gourmet feast of the complexities and nuances of relationships–between truth and fiction as well as between all kinds of people–Anatomy of a Fall plays at the Screening Room in Newburyport through Thursday, Nov. 16.

-30-

Lawyer Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud) with client Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17009710/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

With a squinting Milo Machado Graner and a winking Director Justine Triet.

Time to Honor the NRA

Time to speculate about Time. Just who will be the magazine’s choice for the most anticipated annual designation in America today?

Many still think it the most prestigious honor no matter how many times Time‘s editors spell-out their purpose as not one of promoting what might be called good, but of recognizing what is most influential for better or worse.

So it is that Hitler and Stalin are among the recipients along with Martin Luther King and Pope Francis, and how Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama could both be named twice. So it is that the first pick in 1927, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, retained the designation despite turning into a Nazi apologist a few years later.

At times they have stretched the word “person” to apply to an innovation that influences all of us, such as “The Computer” in 1982. Or to make a statement about what threatens us, such as “Endangered Earth” in 1988. In 2006, the magazine appeared with a reflective cover to name “You.”

Yes, you. And me, too, which reminds me of times Time turned “person” into its plural, most recently in 2017 when it named “The Silence Breakers” just months before the term MeToo was coined and adopted.

Seems obvious to me that in 2023 there’s a group that deserves the same recognition. In fact, it would be a cumulative recognition of successes it has scored repeatedly across America since 1999 when two high school boys found rifles that enabled their pursuit of liberty and happiness in Columbine, Colorado, after they got bored bowling.

From Orlando, Florida, to Burlington, Washington, and from San Bernardino, California, to, most recently, Lewiston, Maine, the National Rifle Association is a proven winner. No matter the place–elementary schools or colleges, churches or synagogues, supermarkets or shopping malls, concerts or now even bowling alleys–no one is beyond the reach of the NRA and its insistence on protecting the right of anyone, no matter how unhinged, to own weapons capable of turning anyone else into yet another bloody corpse.

Tombstones are trophies to the NRA. What other group has so many to show for its litigation and public relations over the years? For its million dollar donations to pro-gun candidates each and every year, including this year when the USA has already had 35 mass killings with two months yet to go.

That’s like a baseball team scoring 35 runs by the end of the seventh inning.

Americans should admire NRA efforts to block background checks, red flag laws, and any attempts a registration; as well as PR campaigns and sloganeering that has convinced enough voters in the right places that the second half of the Second Amendment is the entire thing. Conditions? What conditions? What well-regulated militia? Whole thing might as well say “anything goes.”

Consider what just happened in Lewiston. Warnings from the gunman’s own family and from fellow members of the National Guard were telephoned and emailed to law enforcement as early as February. But no one acted. Why? For fear of an NRA lawsuit. In effect, the NRA made sure that this man retained his Second Amendment right to own assault rifles just like the AK-47s that Washington and Monroe took across the Delaware. And the AK-15s that Jefferson and Madison had in mind when they wrote, “Anything Goes!” God bless those Virginians!

Now that is victory! And what in this sports-crazed, polarized, lottery-loving, viva Las Vegas country is more important than winning? Yes, Las Vegas! Sixty trophies all at once, a record identical to Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs in 1927! And over 800 injured, well more than Barry Bonds’ career homerun record!

As they say in the world of sports, the NRA puts up big numbers.

As the new speaker of the US House of Representatives said when asked about mass shootings, “It’s not guns. We have to look at the human heart.” In 2016–following the massacre at an Orlando night club that gained 54 trophies for the NRA–he blamed “no-fault divorce laws, feminism, and Roe v. Wade.” That 54, by the way, is second only to Vegas, and it matches the Boston Red Sox single-year homerun record set by David Ortiz in 2006.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Dark Ages) is to be praised as a good student of the NRA, as it isn’t what he blames, but what he absolves that wins the day. Not what he says, but what he doesn’t say: Of course it’s not the guns. It’s the access to them.

Winning the day no matter the cost is as American as it gets. No person and no group of any size or description represents 21st Century America so completely and so to-the-core than the NRA:

In a country bent on ignoring anything upsetting or out of a “comfort zone,” the NRA is deft at dismissing such annoyances as the parents at Sandy Hook and the students at Parkland as “crisis actors” in “false flag operations”
In a country that favors private enterprise and disdains community organizing, the NRA harps on personal rights and laughs at public initiatives.
In a country saturated with the simple-minded bromides of Madison Ave., the Gospel according to the NRA tells us that “Guns don’t kill people…” and “Only a good guy with a gun…” And pay no attention to those snowflake parents in Uvalde, Texas, who still wonder why the police stood down while their children were blown away.
In a country that equates driving a car with freedom, the NRA successfully links guns to cars as a reason there should never be any restrictions. No matter that cars require not just registration, but annual inspection, a license to drive, and rules of the road that fill booklets used as texts in auto schools. And who ever mentions that there are many places where cars cannot go?

Name one person or any other group of any size as American as that. If this time Time should pick the NRA, it won’t be for mere recognition of influence, but to honor it for its flag-waving, God-loving American values.

And it will be a tribute to one of its faithful members who passed away in August, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, of cancer, at age 49. Better know as “Joe the Plumber” who confronted Barack Obama with a question about taxes at a televised 2012 campaign event in Indiana, he became a hero of conservative causes that launched him into hosting a talk-radio show. But his foremost contribution to America, his most patriotic act was his open letter to the parents of victims who died in the 2014 shootings in Isla Vista, near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Citing his right to “protect my family,” he put those whiners in their place: “As harsh as this sounds—your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights … We still have the Right to Bear Arms … Any feelings you have toward my rights being taken away from me, lose those.”

With a patriotic resolve like that, he’d be you-know-who’s choice for a VP running mate next year had he not died.

But it’s not too late to pay tribute to him. If Time chooses the NRA for Persons of the Year, the editors may choose to put a single face on the cover. Forget that it turned out that he was not a fully certified plumber, and forget that he owed $1,200 in back taxes before the McCain-Palin campaign bailed him out of oblivion. In 21st Century America, fraud is an asset. Just ask George Santos. Just ask Don the Con. Or Clarence Thomas. Just ask, well, the NRA.

No matter how the editors define it, only Time will tell.

-30-