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Calories and crowds
I don’t do well in crowds. Maybe it’s a form of claustrophobia, but being surrounded by thousands of people in close quarters is anxiety-inducing for me. I seem to require way more time than the average person to recharge my batteries after being around gobs of people. If I didn’t love the comforts of city life so much (great theater, Thai restaurants, big public libraries…), I’d sometimes be tempted to live in a Unabomber cabin. Tell me that place wouldn’t be pretty cozy after it’s had the benefit of a woman’s touch, and with the addition of some of those cute European-sized Miele appliances.
Anyway, I decided to hop on the bus and head over to the Eat Real Festival in Oakland this afternoon, while Joe was doing some volunteer work. The fest is in Jack London Square, which, despite the fact that I’ve lived within a 15-minute drive of the place for over a decade, I’ve probably been to no more than half a dozen times. I know Gertrude Stein’s old saying that “there’s no there there” has been debunked as a misinterpretation, but I think it sort of fits JLS. My feeling was that JLS aspired to be Fisherman’s Wharf, but being Oakland, it never really took off. There’s been talk of opening some kind of Ferry Building-like gourmet marketplace there, but despite a lot of planning (see this rosy projection from 2003), it ain’t happening yet.
The Festival certainly brought crowds to JLS. Big crowds. Huge crowds. Despite the fact that the fest was spread out over quite a vast amount of space, there were several bottlenecks that made going from point A to point B a difficult experience.
Why were so many people there? Two words: food trucks. You may not be aware of the food truck madness that has hit San Francisco, L.A. and many other big cities during the past couple of years. Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, fans can keep track of hundreds of mobile eateries which roam the roads, dispensing everything from cupcakes to Jamaican jerk pork to clam chowder. People love food trucks. Once an underground phenomenon, there are now people who make their living as food truck consultants, helping navigate red tape and providing the vehicles and even the concepts.
So when a festival promises not only to bring together several dozen of the Bay Area’s most popular food trucks — including many well-known eateries which rarely ever cross the Bay Bridge — and the organizers of the event stipulate that no one item of food can cost more than five dollars, you have a recipe for chaos, as well as deliciousness.
The Eat Real Festival had live music and loads of demonstrations (Dave the Butcher was telling a crowd just how difficult it is to find fresh goat; at another venue, people were learning how to make their own kombucha; and food writers were doing readings all day long). But most people were just there to chow down. The lines for Venga Paella, Sam’s Chowder Van (”Come early, the line is 50 deep by 11am!” they tweeted) and Chairman Bao (”The Chairman’s hands are BLEEDING from yesterday, but he’s doing it again for you, customer!” — wearing rubber gloves or at least lots of Band-Aids, I hope) were so intimidating that I didn’t even consider them. I tried to get a mushroom taco from the Taco Guys, but after 15 minutes the line had barely moved, so I gave up. Of course, I can see where the long lines would be not a bug, but a feature — eat something, then work up an appetite while waiting in line for half an hour, and repeat all day long.
Luckily, Vesta Flatbread only had about three people in line, so I was able to snag a sandwich with carrot paté and…. was it beets? Lots of organic crunchy stuff, at any rate. I was just delighted to find something vegetarian that I didn’t have to wait for. And it was tasty and filling. I sat on the grass and ate and watched bhangra dancers.
When I had initially scoped out the list of vendors, I knew there was one I absolutely had to find: The Creme Brûlée Cart. The Cart has been rolling around San Francisco since mid-2009, making it something of a veteran of the mobile food scene, and they have a slew of five-star reviews on Yelp. I wandered around until I found it, near the defunct Barnes & Noble. Perhaps it had something to do with their slightly out of the way location, but there were only a handful of people ordering creme brûlée. They had classic vanilla and Mexican chocolate. Never one to turn down the opportunity to eat chocolate, I went for the latter. My dessert was torched and, for $4, I received a perfect little foil ramekin of creamy goodness with a crisp, crunchy top.
Despite the Cart’s initial Twitter, sent shortly after the fest opened (”Wow, no line. What’s up East Bay? Represent!”), they seem to have had a successful day. A couple of hours ago, they sent the following message: “Creme brûlée cart will not be at Eat Real Fest tomorrow. We apologize, but we are completely out of creme brûlée.” See? Oakland does love you, Creme Brûlée Cart. I also admire the fact that he manages to tweet the “u” with the circumflex and the “e” with the acute accent. That’s dedication to quality right there.
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Dancing with the Reality Stars
Generally, I have to make room in my schedule every Monday and Tuesday night for “Dancing with the Stars.” This fall, however, I am seriously contemplating a “DWTS”-free season.
Here is the new lineup of celebrity hoofers, according to Entertainment Weekly’s web site (the dancers will be officially announced on Monday): America’s most famous teen mom Bristol Palin, former “Baywatch” hunk David Hasselhoff, “Jersey Shore” ab-monster The Situation, Audrina “One of the ‘Hills’ Girls Who Isn’t Lauren” Patridge, washed-up pop star Brandy, Michael “The Male Celine Dion” Bolton, “Brady Bunch” mom Florence Henderson, basketball player-turned-actor Rick Fox, plastic surgery victim Jennifer Grey, naughty comedian Margaret Cho, and recently retired NFL quarterback Kurt Warner.
I strongly suspect that many of you reading this will not be familiar with several of those “stars.” I am slightly ashamed to admit that I could easily identify all but one (Rick Fox was the odd man out; even this non-sports fan had heard of Warner.)
After the monster success (ratings-wise, not artistic) the show enjoyed when Kate Gosselin participated in the spring edition of “DWTS,” it seems like the producers decided that they should go to a reality-heavy format. Hasselhoff has been signed by A&E to do a reality series in which he tries to help his daughters break into show biz. The Situation and Patridge appeared on two of the most famous MTV shows of all time, while Brandy and her brother Ray J met with slightly less success in their VH1 series, “A Family Business.” It only seems like Palin has had her own reality show, perhaps because her real life resembles a docu-soap.
Henderson, playing the Cloris Leachman role, and Cho, most likely in the Penn Gillette Memorial Kicked-Out-The-First-Week slot, might be interesting to watch. And how long do you think it will take until Grey dances to the “Dirty Dancing” hit “I’ve Had the Time Of My Life”? As for Bolton, we can only hope that he will be seen and not heard.
Since Monday is the night before my book group meets, perhaps those hours would be better spent catching up on my reading.
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Please Eat In Ignorance
Monterey, Calif., August 17 -
E.P.L.
I consider myself a pretty discerning filmgoer, but sometimes, I can’t resist the urge to see a schlocky movie. Often, they disappoint (”The DaVinci Code” was just boring); sometimes I relish every lurid moment (”National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets,” brilliantly inane).
I had to see “Eat Pray Love,” mainly because the idea of watching Julia Roberts traipse around the world appealed to me. I may not be going on vacation this summer, but darn it, I could vicariously enjoy somebody else’s vacation!
Roberts plays Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the mega-best-selling book upon which the film is based. Liz is in the throes of a midlife crisis, mainly because her husband (Billy Crudup) is kind of an aimless dweeb. His worst sins seem to be that he did a really embarrassing dance at their wedding, and his constant flitting from one job to another. Plus, he doesn’t even want to accompany his travel writer wife on an all expenses paid trip to Aruba! The last straw for Liz is when, after being hit by a spur-of-the-moment desire to work with underprivileged children, he declares his intention to go for his master’s degree in education. I found that part sort of amusing, considering that Joe completed his master’s in education last year (though he puts his talents to use in corporate America, a more lucrative choice).
So Liz dumps her hubby and, after a brief liaison with a much-younger actor (James Franco), she puts all of her possessions in storage and takes off for Rome. At first, she feels lonely, which the screenwriters helpfully indicate by having her read aloud the dictionary definition of the Italian word solo (alone). Things perk up for her when she meets a young Swedish woman named Sofi, played by Swedish actress Tuva Novotny, who has an almost-too-perfect American accent. Sofi introduces her to an Italian-language tutor, and Liz convinces Sofi that skinny jeans be damned, you’re in Italy, go ahead and eat that pizza and gelato!
Then Liz takes off for India, where she visits an ashram and befriends a jovial Texan (Richard Jenkins), whom she ultimately learns is there in an attempt to escape his troubled past. Jenkins is one of the finest character actors alive, but not even he can breathe life into dialogue that’s 90% platitudes, like “If you want to get to the castle, you’ve got to swim the moat” and “If you clear out all of the space in your mind, you would have a doorway.” After learning that God is inside us all, or something like that, she heads to Bali and meets Javier Bardem as the world’s hunkiest yet most sensitive man — he makes Air Supply and Phil Collins mix tapes, calls his grown son “darling,” and, like Liz, is divorced. (He had been a househusband, and implies that perhaps his wife dumped him for being not quite alpha enough. Now he’s in the “import/export” business, which I always thought was shorthand for louche dealings and money laundering, but Liz takes it as face value. Hey, it beats going for your master’s in education!) Can Liz learn to love again? Spoiler alert: Gilbert’s latest book is entitled Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.
“Eat Pray Love” the film — I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on it — initially seems to stress the importance of a woman learning to know who she is outside the context of her relationships with men. Liz indicates that she’s essentially been paired up since the age of 15. But wherever she goes, everyone, from elderly Italian nonnas to adorable Indonesian tykes, asks her if she’s got a husband, or emphasizes how crucial it is to nab a husband. What if Liz hadn’t found Mr. Right on her journey? Would the book still have been a bestseller, or made into a movie, without the conventional “happy ending”? If you can turn your brain off and enjoy the incredible scenery, though, “Eat Pray Love” provides a pleasant-enough summer diversion.
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Cereal killers
Two years ago, I wrote about Moo…licious, a “cereal bistro” in Berkeley. The place was a huge source of amusement to me — I wrote that Joe said “if Moo…licious is still in business a year from now, he’d treat me to a bowl of cereal.” He didn’t need to pay up; about six months later, the place shut down. Now it only exists in these photos on Yelp. Another cereal restaurant I mentioned in that post, Cereality in Santa Cruz, only lasted a couple months longer.
Now, to me, that says one thing: CEREAL RESTAURANTS = A DUMB IDEA. I love cereal; I eat it every day. But I can buy a box of Kashi, a carton of rice milk and a pint of organic strawberries for seven bucks, and have enough to last me a week. If I am going to leave the house and pay for breakfast food, it will be something I am too lazy to prepare myself, like the French toast strata at Blue Dot.
However, despite the recession, the cereal restaurant concept will not die. I found this April article about D.C.’s Cereal Bowl from the Washington City Paper’s food blog, in which the writer comments that “there wasn’t a soul in sight other than a lone counter employee.” He tried one of the Bowl’s signature dishes, The Sweetest Thing: “a dentist’s wet dream: a bowl filled with Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Fruity Pebbles, Nilla Wafers, and for a garnish, rainbow sprinkles.” The horrifying concoction “looked like someone had melted down a circus clown and tasted like cinnamon bun soup. I couldn’t finish it.” Amazingly, the D.C. Cereal Bowl is still open — and according to its web site, expanding to Qatar (presumably, Lucky Charms will be off the menu there, since mini-marshmallows are made with gelatin, and thus are not halal).
And now San Francisco is getting a brand-new cereal restaurant, Schweet Boks, “the first Cereal Bar & Cafe in the West Coast,” according to its Facebook page. (Maybe Moo…licious doesn’t count since it was a cereal bistro.) I guess the name is supposed to sound like “sweet box,” but it makes me think of “Schweddy Balls” of “Saturday Night Live” fame. The store’s philosophy is “to bring the in-home experience of eating cereal into a cafe.” They also have a trademarked slogan: “Cereal. Crave it. Create it.™”
The eatery will feature free wifi and video games, so perhaps it’ll turn into a neighborhood hangout — I’m not very familiar with the Sunset neighborhood, so I can’t guess whether or not it’s a good fit. But my instinct says “no.”
If you look at the franchises that succeed, they all offer something you can’t get at home. Take Starbucks — the reason they’ll happily sell you a bag of their coffee beans at Safeway is because they know people aren’t coming into their cafes for a plain cup of java. If you spend any time hanging around the counter of a Starbucks, you’ll soon realize that after the morning rush, most of the orders are for complicated stuff like frappucinos and other flavored, creamy drinks. Even the frozen yogurt places that are ubiquitous here in the East Bay all sell the soft-serve variety that can’t easily be replicated at home.
I have an idea for a new least-likely-to-succeed cafe — Tea Baggers. You’ll come in, get a cup of boiling water, and then choose from the 100 different types of tea we have in stock. Earl Grey? Sleepytime? English Breakfast? You name it, Tea Baggers has got it! We also feature exclusive combos, like the Red Dragon (one bag of Red Zinger plus one bag of Green Dragon tea) and Constant Cranberry (Constant Comment plus cranberry herbal). “Tea bags. Dunk the leaf. Taste the leaf. Love the leaf.™”
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News of the Weird
“He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life.”
-Homer SimpsonAfter Rush, what do you do for an encore? Well, the very next night, it was time for Weird Al Yankovic at the Warfield in San Francisco!
I almost feel like I grew up with Al — I used to listen to “The Dr. Demento Show” on my little transistor radio, and I remember hearing his earliest parodies, “Another One Rides the Bus” and “My Bologna.” Then he was omnipresent during the first few years of MTV, thanks to his parodies of Madonna and Michael Jackson. However, I have to admit that while I might have gotten the occasional chuckle out of the videos for “Like a Surgeon” and “Smells Like Nirvana,” I wouldn’t have called myself a fan until Joe (a major Al enthusiast) took me to see him at the California State Fair a few years ago. Al is such an unabashed entertainer that he won me over. A Weird Al concert is two and a half hours of frenetic, nonstop fun, from polka parodies to comic videos to wacky props to more costume changes than you’d expect to see at a Lady Gaga show.
Because I’m old, I have to admit that I didn’t recognize very many of the songs in the polka medley that opened the show. The videos playing behind the band were helpful, but only somewhat — I spotted Lady Gaga (”Polka Face,” of course), Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Ke$ha and Justin Bieber. I had to do a Google search to find out who the rest of the artists in the medley were: they included Flo Rida, Kid Cudi and Sean Kingston. It’s nice to know that 50-year-old Al is still down with what the kids are listening to, though I guess it’s his job to keep up with the top 40.
Besides the ever-popular polka medleys, there are basically two types of Al songs: outright parodies (”You’re Pitiful” is set to the tune of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”) and original numbers that are done in the style of other artists’ music. My favorite of the latter is “Dare To Be Stupid,” which is the best Devo song they never wrote. Al and his band performed it clad in Devo-wear: jumpsuits and energy domes.
Al donned a Kurt Cobain wig and grunge clothing for “Smells Like Nirvana”; Jim Morrison-style leather pants for the Doors pastiche “Craigslist”; a fat suit for the Michael Jackson parody “Fat”; and an Amish beard, hat and plain black clothing for “Amish Paradise.” His big hit “White & Nerdy” saw him rolling around the stage on a Segway. To fill the time between costume changes, the crowd was treated to “Al TV,” brief (and hilarious) videos featuring faux celebrity interviews, twisted 50s-style instructional films and clips from TV shows in which Al either appeared in or was mentioned, such as a snippet from a “Jeopardy!” episode in which all of the category names referenced Yankovic song titles, and Al’s cameo in the horror film “Halloween 2.”
Who would have guessed that after 30 years, Al’s career would have outlasted many of the people he parodied — Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain and Freddie Mercury of Queen have passed away, and some of the artists he poked fun at are barely remembered today. During Tuesday’s concert, he played “You Don’t Love Me Anymore,” which was a take-off on hair metal band Extreme’s 1991 ballad, “More Than Words.” I doubt anyone ever gives a thought to Extreme these days, but Al’s song is still very funny. Then there’s “Gump,” which combines two things nobody cares about anymore (the movie “Forrest Gump” and 90s trio the Presidents of the United States of America). Luckily, that one was abridged during a medley of hits.
A Weird Al concert is an unabashed celebration of pop culture, a time to tamp down your hip indie rocker self so your inner sixth grader can come out to play. (Some kids sitting nearby us were delightedly sorting through packs of official Weird Al trading cards before the show started.) By the time he got around to “Yoda” (a “Star Wars” parody set to the tune of the Kinks’ “Lola”), it was an unabashed nerdapalooza, and I was right there clapping along. Dare to be stupid indeed.
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What about the voice of Geddy Lee
I live by the rule, Never attend a concert where there’s a high likelihood of a drum solo. However, if you’re going to see Rush, there are two guarantees: They will play “Tom Sawyer.” And there will be a drum solo.
After dragging Joe to see Shearwater, Pavement, Devo and Spoon, it was my turn to be dragged down to the Shoreline in Mountain View for Rush’s “Time Machine” tour. It was truly “an evening with Rush”: the show was three hours long, kicking off at 7:30 PM and ending around 10:45 (there was a 15-minute intemission).
It had been years since I’d attended a “big” concert — the Shoreline has a capacity of 22,000, and despite all of the talk about what a lousy year it’s been for concerts, Rush was sold out. Even the lawn was packed.
I had forgotten what it’s like: the mile-long (no exaggeration) trek from the parking lot to our seats; the beach balls flying through the air; the beeline for the restrooms when the band plays one of their less popular songs; and the huge plastic cups of beer everyone seems to be carrying around. (Good thing they’re generous pours, because a Coors Light will set you back $10.) I didn’t dare leave my seat at intermission, for fear that I would be swallowed up by the crowd.
The centerpiece of the show was a performance of the Rush’s 1981 album, Moving Pictures — arguably their most popular disc, as it includes a couple of their biggest hits, “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight.” Along with the seven songs from Moving Pictures, Rush played a broad selection of tunes from throughout its career, ranging from 1974’s “Working Man” to the brand-new “Caravan.”
I admire the fact that Rush has stayed together for over 30 years, and their insistence that Rush is Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson & Neil Peart. If Geddy lost his voice, Alex & Neil wouldn’t do what Yes recently did when Jon Anderson could no longer sing — hire a sound-alike from a tribute band they found on YouTube. (There may not even be any Rush tribute bands — very few musicians could learn to play their notoriously difficult songs.) Indeed, when drummer Peart suffered a personal tragedy in the late 90s, the band broke up for a time, and Geddy & Alex assumed Rush was over. Of course, he eventually came back to the band after taking some time off to heal.
We recently watched the documentary “Beyond the Lighted Stage,” which really brought me up to speed on all things Rush. It’s amusing to note that these guys are such serious musicians that when the trio toured with legendary hedonists Kiss during the 1970s, they preferred to spend their free time watching TV and reading instead of hooking up with groupies. “Every night after the show, girls would line up,” Kiss singer Gene Simmons related. “None of the Rush guys ever [hooked up]. I never understood it. I said, ‘They’re not gay. Farm animals? No, that’s not it.’”
Seeing Rush live, and having experienced several of their previous tours via the DVDs Joe owns, helped me realize why the Canadian rockers are still packing ‘em in while other bands have a hard time filling seats (indeed, tickets to some upcoming shows at the Shoreline were on sale for a mere $10 — promoter Live Nation figures they can make their profits selling those expensive cups of beer). Each Rush tour provides fans with a unique experience. Attendees enjoy special comic videos (who knew the guys in Rush were so funny?), such as this “South Park” short from 2007’s “Snakes & Arrows” tour; this time around, “The Real History of Rush” featured an alternate-universe version of the band, a polka combo called Rash. At the close of the concert, there was a mini-sequel to the 2009 film “I Love You Man,” starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. (In the movie, Rudd and Segel played Rush superfans, and the band made a cameo appearance, so it was nice of the actors to return the favor.)
The set was super-snazzy, with a heavy steampunk influence. A line of faux amp cabinets behind the band looked like old-timey TV sets as designed by Jules Verne; pipes and valves blew steam into the air, and occasionally, a giant blast of pyrotechnics would produce spectacular flames. Peart’s copper drum kit was a real work of art. And the band which has brought props like washing machines and chicken rotisseries onstage provided that extra bit of whimsy with a “sausage machine” — a roadie came out a couple times during the show to drop “meat” into it, and, yes, sausages came out. (Here are some more nice pics.) An enormous video screen enabled even those on the outer reaches of the lawn to see Geddy play the keyboard or check out overhead shots of Peart’s kit as he — yes — plays his lengthy drum solo.
I don’t think Rush will ever be quite my cup of tea, but I can appreciate their musical virtuosity and the bond they have with their fans. It’s obvious they give their all every single night to make sure everybody gets their money’s worth and goes home happy.
After seeing Rush, could I possibly experience anything whiter and nerdier? Stay tuned and find out tomorrow.
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If you dig on vegan food…
I haven’t eaten a hamburger or a hot dog in over 20 years. That doesn’t bother me. I haven’t eaten turkey at Thanksgiving for over a decade; I don’t miss it.
So why is it so hard to contemplate giving up dairy, too?
Many years ago, I switched from real milk to rice milk, which I pour on my Kashi cereal every morning. But I still use real butter, occasionally cook with eggs, and, of course, eat cheese.
I vowed to give up cheese during the month of August, though I’ve already messed up. I ordered a vegan wrap at a deli, and didn’t notice until after I had already started eating that there were some stray feta crumbles on the accompanying pasta salad.
In his book Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain declared: “To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.”
To me, eating a sausage would be somewhat akin to taking a bite out of a napkin — as far as I’m concerned, they are both non-food substances. But I feel like I do enjoy food. The aforementioned vegan sandwich had avocado, grilled red peppers and onions, and crisp lettuce. I enjoyed the heck out of it.
It’s pretty easy to avoid “stealth meat,” especially in the Bay Area. Being a vegan, however, would require a whole other level of vigilance. Right now, I can go into pretty much any restaurant and find one or two vegetarian dishes. Eating vegan means either restricting yourself to Asian restaurants or making special requests. I have a friend who has to follow a strict vegan diet for health reasons, and I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it can be.
Most of my vegetarian friends are pretty flexible about their diets — for some reason, sushi seems to be a popular occasional item with people who otherwise shun animal products. (Personally, I could do without raw fish, but I eat salmon maybe once or twice a month, making sure that it’s wild-caught Alaskan salmon — check out the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch web site if you eat fish to make sure you’re not contributing to depletion of overfished species.) If any of my veg pals want to comment on why they haven’t totally committed to being vegan, I’d be interested to hear about it. I think in my own case, I just don’t want to be such a picky eater.
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Travesties
I finally found where the summer weather is hiding! It’s over in Marin County, namely the Forest Meadows Amphitheater in San Rafael. We headed over there to see Marin Shakespeare’s production of Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” yesterday, and since they perform outdoors, naturally, we packed sweatshirts and fleece jackets. I know it’s hard for those of you suffering through long stretches of humid 100-degree days to understand, but it’s chilly here, especially in the evenings. Thick fog and highs around 60-65 degrees are not uncommon. I don’t remember the last time the temperature even got up to 70 here in the coastal East Bay. It kind of stinks, because I like warm weather.
Anyway, the sun was shining on our backs when we arrived at the Forest Meadows Amphitheater, and several patrons wore floppy hats or wrapped kerchiefs around their necks to prevent sunburn. Even when evening fell, it was pleasantly warm; certainly no need to “dress in warm layers and bring a blanket, as well as hat and gloves,” as the web site for the East Bay’s Cal Shakes (only about 25 miles away from Forest Meadows) recommends. Let’s hear it for Marin!
Of course, even the balmiest day couldn’t make up for bad theater, and luckily, Marin Shakes’ rendition of Stoppard’s notoriously difficult play is absolutely top-notch. This was the fourth time I’ve seen “Travesties,” and the first time I really felt I understood everything that was going on. Before the show started, the director, Robert Currier, came out and gave the crowd the equivalent of a cheat sheet, talking for about five minutes about how Stoppard came up with the story, and which parts of it were true. It is based on real events — during World War I, James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin, and Dadaist Tristan Tzara were all living in Zürich, Switzerland. English consular official Henry Carr, whose often-faulty remembrances bookend the play, was a real person, and Carr did star in the English Players’ production of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Carr also wound up suing the Players’ business manager, Joyce, after the run of the play, trying to recoup some expenses, and Joyce retaliated by portraying Carr as a drunk in Ulysses. Pretty much everything else in “Travesties” is the product of Stoppard’s fertile imagination.
Currier’s interpretation of “Travesties” is big, broad, and comic. Actors spray each other with seltzer and break the fourth wall, dashing into the audience to steal cookies for their “teatime”; a quartet of stagehands joins in the action, merrily pushing around the trio of mobile staircases that comprise the bulk of the set (yesterday may be the first time I ever saw stagehands join the actors at the curtain call); and the players take every opportunity to wring laughs out of the material — one of the characters literally slips on a banana peel. But too much subtlety can be deadly to this play; the first act is a butt-numbing 90 minutes long, and if you’re not familiar with Stoppard’s reference points (Ulysses, “Earnest,” Shakespeare’s sonnets, and old vaudeville routines, to name a few), it can be tough going — when we saw the play at ACT back in the fall of 2006, there were plenty of walk-outs. So kudos to Marin Shakes for making this play so accessible and fun. As far as I can tell, nobody left, and everybody applauded enthusiastically at the end.
Perhaps the best reason to see this “Travesties,” though, is William Elsman, who is miraculously good as Carr, a tremendously demanding role that requires the recitation of a 20-minute monologue at the top of the show, and then instantly morphing from a doddering old man into a slightly dotty younger one. I have to say that Elsman is the best Carr I’ve ever seen. He’s an upper-class twit, whose strange obsession with trousers — “the sixteen ounce serge, the heavy worsteds, the silk flannel mixture” — leads to his legal battle with James Joyce, and yet he has to be likable and engaging enough for us to follow along with him. Elsman is a wonderful comic actor, and he has plenty of strong support, including his wife, Alexandra Matthew, as librarian Cecily Carruthers, and Lucas McClure as the limerick-spouting Joyce. (Indeed, all of the dialogue in one brief scene is written entirely in limerick form, requiring split-second timing from the actors; they pull it off with aplomb.)
I looked up a few reviews of Marin Shakes’ “Travesties” online — it’s uniformly won raves, though I had to chuckle at the critic who called the play a “witty brainteaser,” warning that it isn’t “something likely to pleasure devotees of ‘The Bachelorette.’” Call me crazy, but I saw “Travesties” yesterday, and tonight, I’m settling in front of the TV to see if Ali picks Chris or Roberto — or neither. Hey, some of us can appreciate both Tom Stoppard and reality TV!
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Summer’s spiciest movies
I have had no trouble sticking to my post-”Iron Man” resolution to boycott superhero movies, though there seems to be another onslaught on the way. I’m still puzzling out what the difference is between “The Green Hornet” and “The Green Lantern”; all I know is I reserve a special enmity for the latter, because it co-stars my favorite actor, Peter Sarsgaard, in some kind of freakish makeup that makes him look like a cross between the kid from “Mask” and a Klingon.
The fact that indie film “The Kids Are All Right” is doing extremely well at the box office shows that there are adults who want to go to the movies during the summer. I was so excited that it was opening at our local multiplex, which usually only shows the most commercial Hollywood fare, that I insisted we go see it immediately, if for no other reason than to encourage more quality films to play there. After all, “Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty” is opening next Friday and I’m sure the theater operators would be merciless in kicking “The Kids Are All Right” to the curb if it failed to perform.
If you’re the sort of person who sought out previous indie summer hits like “Little Miss Sunshine” and “(500) Days of Summer,” you probably already have “Kids” on your to-see list. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play a lesbian couple who have been together for a couple of decades. Each of them had a baby, using sperm from the same donor. Moore’s Jules is the biological mom of son Laser, a slightly feckless 15-year-old whom his moms fear is spending too much time with a pal who’s a “bad influence.” Nic’s (Bening) bio-kid is Joni, an 18-year-old high achiever who is about to leave for college. Before she goes, Laser asks her to contact the sperm bank to see if they can give her any information about their donor (you have to be 18 to make the request). She’s hesitant, but ultimately makes the call, which leads to the kids meeting Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a restaurant owner who has never quite settled down since he dropped out of college — a fact which disturbs Nic, who had chosen Paul in part because he had indicated on his form that he was an international studies major.
Gradually, Paul finds himself bonding in his laid-back way with the kids and with Jules, while the highly-strung Nic remains suspicious of his motives. I didn’t read any reviews of this film before seeing it, and afterwards, when I did go back and read a few of them, I was disappointed (though not particularly surprised) that almost all of them gave away what happens next. You won’t hear it from me!
Even if you’re “opposite married,” in the immortal words of Carrie Prejean, you’ll no doubt find yourself relating to the difficulties Nic & Jules go through — they could be any long-wed couple, trying to balance work and family commitments and dealing with an impending empty nest. Bening and Moore both give incredible performances, and really make us believe in this couple’s relationship. Bening has the slightly more difficult role — she’s often unlikable, but in several scenes is heartbreakingly sympathetic. (I also appreciate the fact that Bening is that rare Hollywood creature who has obviously never gone under the knife; she would never have been able to convincingly play this role if she’d been Botoxed and nipped & tucked.) Considering that parts this good for actresses don’t come along too frequently, I suspect she’ll be remembered at Oscar time. Recommended for anyone who appreciates quality cinema, with the minor caveat that this film definitely earns its R rating.
As usual in the world of the MPAA, adult sexytime = R, while approximately 47 dead bodies shot at point-blank range = PG-13. There’s a high body count in “Salt,” the new spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie, and this is usually the kind of film that action-movie buff Joe goes to see by himself. But again, I wanted to use my dollars to make a statement: I want to see a woman kick ass, for a change! I was especially intrigued by the fact that the script was written for a male actor (Salt was originally supposed to be played by Tom Cruise, who wound up doing “Knight & Day” with Cameron Diaz instead).
It is indeed great to see an actress do the sort of outrageous stunts and gunplay that is usually the purview of men. But after a promising first hour, “Salt” goes completely off the rails. As far as spy fiction goes, it’s so ridiculous that it makes the TV show “Burn Notice” look like a documentary by comparison. (”BN”’s Fiona, incidentally, could go head to head with Evelyn Salt any day.) The plot involves deep-cover Russian agents living in the U.S., which might have seemed quaintly nostalgic until a bunch of them were actually discovered last month. (That part is somewhat plausible; what happens next just gets silly.) Jolie is excellent; the script, not so much. If there’s a “Salt II,” “III,” etc. the series could develop into a distaff version of the “Bourne” flicks. Jolie deserves a screenwriter who can make Salt live up to her spicy potential.
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