I Want To Go To Chelsea

Spent the weekend in NYC again.  Lovely weather.  It was one of those happy to be alive times.  Well, I'm always happy to be alive but you know what I mean.  This weekend I was really happy to be alive.

When we walked out of The Manhattan Club about 1 o'clock on Friday afternoon we still hadn't decided what we wanted to do with the day.  A few steps towards Columbus Circle I remembered that we wanted to walk The High Line, which opened last year and which we wanted to do last time we were in NYC earlier this summer but didn't because it was like 100 degrees and it's all out in the open.  (We went to Central Park instead that time, where at least there was shade.)  So we headed downtown, got off the C train at 14th St. and headed west towards 10th Ave. where you can pick up the High Line.  Just as we were crossing 9th Ave.  I looked to my right and noticed a sign for Chelsea Market.  I'd heard of Chelsea Market but knew nothing about it so I grabbed my girl and steered her towards 15th St., saying let's take a quick peek inside.  We spent two hours there.  It turned out to be one of those serendipitous decisions that make travelling so much fun, the discovery of a little gem that you'll remember and return to anytime with pleasure.  It's housed in the old Nabisco Co. (The National Biscuit Company) warehouse, where they made the first Oreo cookies. It's totally restored as a kind of food court though they've kept a lot of the history. It's loaded up with the restaurants, delis and bakeries, all with the most delicious-looking food, a fabulous grocery store, and a whole lot of other fun places, all having to do with food.  The fact that I was starving may have had something to do with everything looking so scrumptious but I came away thinking I could eat at Chelsea Market for weeks without ever repeating a meal or having a bad one.  We had dinner reservations so we indulged in nothing but a baguette from Amy's Bread, which reminded us of some of the baguette's we'd had in Paris last year. Delicious. Before we'd left home in the morning I almost grabbed my camera, my pocket Canon Powershot but I like to walk the streets as unencumbered as possible.  As soon as we'd entered the market I regretted it.  Next time I bring the camera because the place was full of photographic possibilities.  Even the cupcakes.  My wife had mentioned to me about a week ago that there is some sort of national cupcake craze going on, and perhaps has been going on for some time.  It's certainly in full rage at Chelsea Market, where the bakeries are apparently in competition to outdo each other in cupcake imagination and design. People are clever, in all fields, even cupcakes, and some of the cupcake artistry made me smile. I didn't eat one though because that much sugar on an empty stomach would have sent me reeling.  Anyhow, go to Chelsea Market.  Next time we're going to go just to eat our way down the line.

We left Chelsea Market and then continued on our original course over to the High Line. Which is fine, a nice walk with a different perspective on the city.  They will be extending it too, eventually up to 34 St (right now it ends at 20th, I think).  My baby then wanted to walk over to the river so we headed west towards the Hudson and ran right smack into the Chelsea Piers and its huge sporting complex right on the river.  I'd heard of the multi-level driving range on the Hudson and there it was.  It's about 50 yards wide, extending out a little short of 200 yards, all enclosed with netting 40-50 yards high. So I guess the game would be, can you fly one over the net into the river? You'd have to be a big hitter to do so - a ball still that high 200 yards out probably has to travel at least 250 in the air and there are not many of us who can do that. I can't. I'm happy when I drive one 250 total.

We walked all around the piers, ending up in the park to the north of them, a lovely spot whose name I do not know. There are a hundred places in the city to get away from it all and here was another one: people strolling, sunning themselves, kids frolicking in little playgrounds and tiny water parks. All in all, a lovely day. And we still had the evening and the full day on Saturday.

We ate at Amarone Ristorante, a new place for us because we've decided to always try to do new things when we go to NYC.  And it was good.  Not out of this world, but good.  They made a good martini.

We then went to a show that I guess everyone in America has seen, Wicked.  I wanted to like it, really I did.  I was aware that it was a crowd-pleasing blockbuster going in and my history with these types of shows is not good but I went in with an open-mind, honestly. But it was bad.  It wasn't just kinda bad, or sorta bad.  It was truly bad.  And I knew it would be by the end of the opening scene, when I turned to my wife and whispered, "I hate it."  I found it earnest and plodding throughout, with songs so banal and tuneless I defy anyone to walk out of the theatre humming them.  There was also little humor besides the one overdone gag of the blonde witch throwing her hair back as an indicator that she was a dumb blonde. There were chuckles and obvious gag lines but never did the crowd burst into a roar of laughter.  Perhaps one of the problems is that we just watched the PBS broadcast of South Pacific, which we had seen live twice and which I consider a bit of a minor miracle in its structure, its staging, its storytelling, its integration of book and musical numbers.  And the songs!  Everyone walks out of South Pacific humming those songs and, if they are like me, continue humming them for a week.  All in all,  it's a bit of perfection in an imperfect world.  So maybe South Pacific was too close to see Wicked and not see all flaws.  Its schizophrenic storytelling is part of the problem, jumping from romance to action to (attempts at) comedy and back again, all in the same scene.  The writers also just made things up when they needed to turn the story in a different direction.  There was no flow and no sense.  It was incoherent to me and I'd only had one martini and one beer so it had nothing to do with that.  By the break I was convinced my wife would want to leave with me but she was so fascinated by its badness she wanted to stay and see if it could get any worse.  It did.  What had been truly bad in the first half of the show became farcical in the second.  The story is wildly out of control here with its explanations of how the Tin Man and the Scarecrow came to be (with only a nod to an offstage lion.) It throws in a bit of animal rights nonsense, a girl in a wheelchair, and an incredulous motivation about how the Wicked Witch of the West became so. You see, she was the good one, the caring one, a misfit in this cruel and corrupt world. By the penultimate scene, when Glinda (the Good With of The North) and the girl who is about to become the Wicked Witch of the West sing a sickly sweet song of understanding to each other I was shaking with stifled laughter, my hand over my mouth. Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg were probably doing the same in their graves, while spinning.  To wit, I've already compared Wicked to South Pacific but the show it should really be compared with is The Wizard of Oz.  Just think of all the wonderful songs in that show.  Think of the lightness, the humor, the charm, all staples of American musicals, both Broadway and Hollywood. Wicked has none of it. It's all pure spectacle and beyond that, nothing.  It's success is nearly incomprehensible to me but, as my wife pointed out on the walk back to our room, people love a spectacle. I certainly realize I'm in the minority in my opinion about Wicked but there's little I can do about that.  The show stinks.

We slept in on Saturday morning and then my wife took her run in Central Park, her favorite activity in NYC, so we didn't really get started until about 11:30.  Which was fine because our plan was to head down to Greenwich Village for the day.  We were seeing the Barrow Theatre's production of Our Town in the evening so we decided to spend the entire day down there.  We've been to the Village lots of times, to see shows or just to wander but we never did a tour so I found a good one online and printed it out.  And it was okay but I'd just rather wander the streets.  Still, my baby likes to walk around getting some history about the buildings and such.  One place we went into was the Magnolia Bakery, which confirmed the cupcake craze. Apparently some girl from the show Sex and the City (I only watched it once, for about ten minutes.  That was enough.) made it and the cupcakes popular.  So the entire country is eating cupcakes because this girl on a bad TV show did.  Is that it?

Anyhow, we ended up in Washington Square Park, which I love, and relaxed there for awhile, along with thousands of other people.  It really was a lovely weekend and everyone was out.  We had some time so we decided to walk back up to Union Square Park, at 14th St. and take the subway back to our room so we could freshen up before dinner and the show. It was jammed here too.  There was a hip-hop band playing with the name of BR and Timebomb (memo to band: get a new name) and they were good.  What makes them good is a young lady named Olivia Martinez, who plays a mean violin and gives the band that something extra that separates them from the ordinary.  She saws her way through their songs with abandon, screeching and scratching out melodic lines behind the beat and adding resonance to what otherwise might be ordinary.  She's wonderful.  Her bandmate Shanelle Jenkins can play a very nice trumpet and she can sing too - she should be the lead singer of the band, not BR, or she should grab Ms. Martinez and start up a new band.  At any rate, we enjoyed listening for awhile and we picked up one of their CDs, not because I think we'll ever listen to it (this kind of music is best experienced live) but because we dropped them a donation and the CD came with the donation.  You don't stand and listen to a band and then walk away without helping them out.

We then made our way through the farmer's market they set up every weekend at Union Square Park and bought some apples for the ride home the next day.  Then back to the room for a shower and change of clothes, turn right back around and head back to the Village.

We ate at The Cornelia Street Cafe and it was really good.   I had the warm goat cheese salad and that night's special, a Filet Mignon Au Poivre, very delicious.  A couple of beers, an espresso and I was ready to see Our Town at the Barrow Theatre, which has been around for a couple of years but is closing in a few weeks.  It is as good as Wicked was bad and I walked out with my faith in the theatre restored. I'd like to blog more about it and perhaps will soon but that's it for today - I'm blogged out.  It was a great weekend.

NOTE:  This post's title is a play on Elvis Costello's "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea".  I wanted to put the "Don't" in the title with a slash through it but couldn't figure out how to use the html slash in a post's title.  Because I really do want to go to Chelsea.  Again.

Interlude

Due to another great suggestion from Terry Teachout I've discovered The Errol Garner Trio.  Here they are playing Crēme De Menthe from their recently released import CD, The Most Happy Piano: The 1956 Studio Sessions:

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Twelfth Night and a Dry Martini

Is Twelfth Night the most appealing of Shakespeare's comedies? It's certainly my favorite and last night's performance at the Shakespeare Theater's Sydney Harmon Hall was the best performance of it we've seen yet.  Great acting, great staging, great imagination from the director.  We were in the second row and it was free as this was the annual Summer Free-For-All, so you can't be that.  In order to save costs for the free-for-all the company will normally restage one of its previous shows. This Twelfth Night had originally been part of the 2008-2009 series and, as season tickets holders, we had tickets but couldn't go at the last minute due to family duties.  We gave the tickets to our niece and her husband, who reported back that it was marvelous.  And so it is.  A charming production, and riotously funny.

One observation we made immediately was that the crowd for the free-for-all is much younger than the crowd for the shows during the season, which is to be expected.  To begin with it's free so the younger folks who can't afford the price of an in-season shows will show up.  Also, if you're not season ticket holders like my wife and I, you have to stand in line the day of the show to get tickets.  Clearly, the younger crowd is more likely to do this than your old fogies. At any rate, we found ourselves last night to be older than the average age of the crowd rather than being the youngsters.  Which is great.  Everyone loves Shakespeare and some of these younger people will, as they age, become the season ticket holders of the future.  Tradition is important.  The passing on of the culture is important. We've lost much, as you will see below, but Shakespeare will always survive.

We dined at Carmine's before the show, which just opened up near the theater (which is right across from the Verizon Center.)  We've been regulars at the Carmine's in NYC for years, both the 44th street and 91st street locations, and now they've just opened up in DC. The food is good but it's their salads we love especially. For years when I ask my wife where she wants to go to dinner she answers, "I want a Carmine's salad."  Finally, I can deliver. We can report that the food has made the transfer from New York to DC without problem - it was really good.

We did encounter, alas, one more indication of continuing societal decay.  I ordered a Beefeater martini before dinner, as is my want.  It took forever to arrive and when it did the waiter explained it took so long because he had to type the entire thing in as I was the first person he'd waited on who'd ordered a martini.  Carmine's opened up a few weeks ago and I'm his first martini drinker? I'd talked about the fate of the martini in one of my first posts three years back, linking to a column about its decline but last night drove home how far we've really have fallen.  Virtually no one drinks martinis anymore. I'm one of the lasts one out there holding up the Mad Men culture.  Me and Roger Sterling.  Anyone else want to join us?

A Few of My Favorite Things

I've mentioned the Ricochet website and its weekly podcast a few times now and I'm here to recommend both again.  I can attest that this week's podcast is a treat and I've only listened to the first thirty minutes or so.   James Lileks dominates the conversation, which is good because he is perhaps the most perceptive and interesting cultural commentator we have today, and a really funny guy to boot.  Rather than politics, the podcast takes off in a pop-culture direction and a more enjoyable conversation you will not find this week, for me anyway, because they end up talking about two of my favorite things.  The first of those is Mad Men.  Peter Robinson, one of the other hosts, mentions that he's just begun watching and cannot figure out what all the fuss is about.  He claims that The Sopranos was a much better show.  To which Lileks take immediate exception and explains to Robinson what Mad Men is really all about:

It really is about the identity that people construct about themselves in their personal and public lives and how it relates to advertising, which is a tool we all use to construct our lives.  There's a speech that Don Draper gives at one point about what advertising is supposed to do.  He says you're driving down the highway and you see that billboard and it says "You're all right, things are all right, what you're doing is right"....but it's also about something else.  It's about what we lost and what we gained...what we gained was liberation of females...we gained more respectful work places, we gained more sophisticated advertising, we gained the freedom not to sweat all day in a tie.  But what we lost was the solidity of a self-confident culture that you still feel in Mad Men and that's all going to go away and evaporate completely in the sixties and what comes afterwards.

I can hardly disagree with that considering some of my own comments about the show in this space:

The show about a group of people in the advertising business, whose job it is to construct an identity for the products they sell, is really about the identity we construct for our own selves, the veneer we put on day by day to show the outside world. Don Draper, Betty Draper, Peggy Olsen, Pete Campbell, Sal Romano, now even Joan Holloway, all have built an identity that is at odds, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot, with who they truly are. And so it is with us all. We’ve all got something to hide.

...and more recently:

one of the appeals of Mad Men, for me, and as Foster argues, is the sense that we’ve lost something that those people had. I’m not even sure I can define what’s been lost but I’ll try. What’s lost is a sense of decorum, a sense of style, an agreement on how people behaved in public, the way men treated women in public, a sense of dignity, a confidence, an optimism....[but] here come “the sixties.” From our viewpoint we know what that means for America – all the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off – but what it means for Don Draper is still to be seen.

I'd like to flatter myself and say that James Lileks and I are saying essentially the same thing in slightly different words.

The other favorite thing of mine they discuss is the recent PBS live broadcast of Lincoln Center's production of South Pacific.  Peter Robinson mentions how he and his wife stumbled upon it while flipping channels the other night:

It was a beautifully done production of South Pacific...with a full orchestra...the actors and actresses could all sing and they could all act and it was beautifully staged, nothing camp or ironic about it, it was just a production of South Pacific.  And one by one the children in my family came in and saw this thing and sat down entranced, unable to pull themselves away...and what I thought was, "there's beauty here, unselfconsciously beautiful.  Rodgers and Hammerstein were striving for real beauty."

And oh my goodness did they achieve it.  My wife and I saw South Pacific at Lincoln Center twice and we watched the broadcast the other evening.  It is as well-done a show as we've ever seen, beautifully put together, as near to perfect as a staged production can be.  It is SO MUCH FUN.  Funny, sweet, emotionally moving.  And corny and silly.  It's set in the South Pacific but it's pure Americana.  And, oh, the songs! As played by the full orchestra, sung in those wonderful voices - they give me goosebumps.  The show closes in a few weeks after a run of a few years.   Still, even if you missed the live broadcast the other night, PBS repeats their broadcasts often and I'm sure you can still catch it. If you have any affinity at all for Broadway musicals it is a not to be missed production - it gives you an idea of what the glory days must have been like, all the excitement and the grandeur and, yes, the beauty.

Knockout

Two posts below this one I talk about Heather Mac Donald's recent article in City Journal, Classical Music's New Golden Age, and the internet battle that ensued when Greg Sandow challenged her arguments on his own blog.  I mentioned that Heather had responded but I had not yet read it. Well, now I have and it's not even close - Heather wins.  Her rebuttal to Sandow's curiously combative posts make me feel a bit sorry for the guy - he never had a chance.  Remind me never to get into an argument with Heather Mac Donald.  She's too smart, too well-prepared, marshals her facts too well, has too much reason and too much writing ability, for most of us to have a chance against her.  The original is linked to above, her rebuttal to Sandow is here.  Read them both.  Marvelous entertainment.

The argument Heather makes that reflects my own experience is the bounty of music available over the Internet: videos on YouTube, whether professional or amatuer; CDs and mp3 downloads for purchase on amazon.com and other sites; and classical music web sites where one can learn all there is to know about the music and those who compose and perform it.  She states "the classical recording industry is still shooting out more music than anyone can possibly take in over a lifetime" and I've found that to be true.  I set a goal for myself at the beginning of the year to learn fifty new classical pieces during the 2010 calendar year and I'm probably on pace to keep that goal.  However, there is so much more to learn it sometimes seems daunting.  I don't want to just have a passing acquaintance with the music, I want to know it like I know rock and roll music or baseball, deeply, authoritatively.  That will take years of listening and reading, a labor of love I'll relish.

You didn't think I'd let you get away without some music, did you? The other day I gave you the first movement of Brahms' Piano Trio #1 in B major.  Today I give you the second movement of Brahms' Piano Trio #2 in C major.  Brahms, I have found, benefits from repeated listenings more than most composers.  In fact, much of his music takes repeated listening before it sinks in, due perhaps to his long, langorous, melodic lines.  But once they sink in their beauty is unmistakable.  I listened to the C major trio this morning while working out and once I was through, I listened again.  It's all wonderful but I'm partial to the slow movement.  Enjoy.

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Excerpt

"Music records the evolution of the human soul. To hear how the elegance of the baroque developed into the grandeur of the classical style, which in turn gave way to the languid sensuality and unbridled passion of Romanticism, is to trace how variously human beings have expressed longing, desire, triumph, and sorrow over the centuries."

- Heather Mac Donald, Classical Music’s New Golden Age

A New Golden Age for Classical Music?

Heather Mac Donald argues that we are in the middle of one in this excellent piece over at City Journal.  If you love classical music I urge you to read it.  Whether you agree or disagree, her obvious love for the music is infectious.  I just discovered the piece yesterday and read it last night.   Today I found she's been in a good ole' knock-down drag-out over the issue with Greg Sandow, who blogs about classical music over at ArtsJournal. Sandow's objections to her piece can be found in Heather's rebuttal, which I haven't read yet but will by the end of the evening.  Heather, whom I've loved for years for her writings on crime, terrorism, and immigration over at City Journal, has recently begun focusing her attention on classical music. It's a great gift to those of us who admire her and love classical music. Sandow I don't know as much about, though I think he makes some decent points in his posts.  While it's clear they don't have much love lost for each other, I'm finding it to be great fun. I'm also wondering what Terry Teachout has to say about the matter.  Terry, who also blogs at Arts Journal, must have some knowledge of Sandow and his writings, and as a fellow New Yorker and conservative he is no doubt aware of Heather Mac Donald.  He also has a deep knowledge of the music and writes beautifully about it.  So I propose he be the referee and settle the matter.  In the meantime, how about some Brahms, specifically the first movement of the Piano Trio in B, a piece I've been listening to over and over recently, performed by Eugene Istomin, Isaac Stern, and Leonard Rose.

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