Wednesday, December 26, 2007

In the Bleak MidPinter & Rossetti's Poem

The Homecoming changed my life. Before the play, I thought words were just the vessles of meaning; after it, I saw them as weapons of defense. Before, I thought theatre was about the spoken; after, I understood the eloquence of the unspoken. John Lahr, The New Yorker But like most great art The Homecoming...
              

Monday, December 24, 2007

Verbum Caro Factum Est

‘Twas the night before Christmaswhen all through the blog,holiday cheer was stirring,Or was it the nog?I heartily recommend making this a participatory post: go mix up a batch of nog for yourself. Here is a top recipe. By using Hagen Daz as the base, you don’t have to get all the milk and sugar together...
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Friday, December 21, 2007

"Too Many Christmas Trees": An Allegory for Our Times

We have all now heard of the Dad in California who took his 3 kids to find the perfect Christmas tree, got turned around and discovered they were lost. Seriously lost. In peril for their lives lost.This story is one for the books in so many ways:“They had left the Paradise Pentecostal Church of God...
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Saturday, December 8, 2007

"Lyrics I Write of You . . . "

Having a broken ankle has changed my morning routine. The boot is heavy and uncomfortable enough to make the crowded morning subway too difficult to negotiate. When I can build in an hour of travel time, I take 3 buses. Otherwise, I take a taxi. It’s wildly outside of the budget, but I’m not going...
              

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Not Yet "Time Out" for Brubeck

Dave Brubeck brought jazz back to 52nd street tonight at The Paley Center for Media. He came for an evening to look at how television has captured his work over the last fifty years. We watched clips from the heyday of live fifties tv, seeing the young, earnest pencil-tied Dave Brubeck Quartet in glorious...
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Sunday, November 25, 2007

The House that M.A. Built

It is one year ago today that I staked my own little claim here in the blogsphere and joined the conversation. I always wanted a vacation home--this space may be the closest I ever get. Reading blogs is a vacation of sorts into a world of imagination, a sojourn into interesting, fresh, sometimes bizarre...
              

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

M.A. Peel's Balloonatic Thanksgiving Story

My crew As is true for many of the great pairings—Crockett & Tubbs, Watson & Holmes, Mulder & Scully—Steed and I do not tell each other everything. It’s better that way; it keeps lines defined. This had the most charming consequence on Thanksgiving Day some years ago. The Set-up In...
              

Saturday, November 17, 2007

The 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore' Blues

It was only a really long seven weeks ago that I became the poster child for “No Running in the Subway.”The good news is that the ankle fractures do not require surgery. The bad news is these fractures can’t be helped by surgery. And so I have entered the tedious land of PT—-where progress is measured...
              

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: Finding the Infinite

There are some images that you see as a child and wonder what it would be like to be there. For me, the Terrace of the Infinite was one of those images. It was so exotic, those ancient Romans perched against the infinite blue of the water and the sky. I had no idea where it actually was. Then one day...
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Sunday, November 4, 2007

Remember to Be Funny This Week

Tuesday we start the Comedy Blogathon over at newcritics; I'll probably crosspost the links here.There are a lot of great posts and surprises planned at newcritics for our Comedy Week, but the blogathon won't be any fun with YOU. Yes, YOU. Don't make everyone else do all the heavy lifting. Look in your...
              

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Suprise Saints of My Generation: The Who

When I was a kid it confused and bothered me that All Saints’ Day comes before All Souls. I knew that Halloween was the vigil of a commemoration of the dead, and I didn’t understand how it could leap over this Saints thing.Then it became more clear that the “hallowed” of all Hallows Eve means holy or...
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Thursday, October 25, 2007

Steve Martin Comes On Board

Well, not knowingly. But the gang at newcritics is running this comedy blog-a-thon , Nov. 6 to 11, during an all-comedy posts week, and Steve is kindly coming out with his memoir next month, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, which is excerpted in the Oct. 29 New Yorker. Is newcritics a thought leader...
              

Sunday, October 21, 2007

My Yearly Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and I have a certain day in common, which happens to be this day. And so I have a yearly excuse to revisit some of those couplets that generations have embraced in to our living language: It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?'****Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor...
              

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Mad Men: TV's Own Box of Chocolates

As we bid goodbye to the gang at Sterling Cooper until sometime next summer, this 1994 New Yorker cartoon by Lee Lorenz popped into my head.In case we have forgotten, Forrest Gump polarized film critics and audiences. As Entertainment Weekly noted in 2004, "Nearly a decade after it earned gazillions...
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Friday, October 12, 2007

A Comedy Blog-a-thon: It's a Little Bit Funny

The world situation is relentlessly grim, the national political scene is discouraging, and the Mets go into the history books as one of the all-time greatest collapses of a team during one season.To offer some relief from this reality, newcritics is hosting a comedy blog-a-thon November 6 to 11 to...
              

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Live Blogging Mad Men:
"And you, sir, are no John Galt"

Who is Don Draper, besides being Dick Whitman? On the one hand he is a self-made man who has ably demonstrated Galt’s creed: “I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” Just ask his half brother, or his poor wife and children.I was surprised when Ayn Rand was brought into Mad Men via Mr. Cooper. Other than on The...
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Monday, October 8, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: The Amalfi Coast

“I’m near Salerno—do you want to visit?”It was a variation on a theme from the last several years. Usually Cadfael said, ”I’ll meet you anywhere in the world.” But this time the destination was predetermined, as though we were Calvinists: the Amalfi Coast. Cad picked me up at the Naples airport, and...
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Thursday, October 4, 2007

The Pequa Boys Rock; Walgreens Scoops Pushing Daisies

Ankle issues have impeded some of my usually scheduled blogging—-it’s that, or when I had my hair cut last week, I, like Samson, lost some of my writing strength. It was fun to see my hometown’s two comic sons on screen together tonight on 30 Rock. The episode wasn’t fabulous, but it was good. I love the music of the show, from the charmingly frantic, forties chase scene beats of the opening, to the...
              

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Rescuers of Every Stripe

So now the tables are turned. You might remember the time Steed was laid up with an injured knee from falling down the stairs. Turned out there had been a trip wire place across the bottom step by a diabolical mastermind, to prevent him from joining me for weekend of bridge with Sir Cavalier Rusticana—-...
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Thursday, September 27, 2007

L.B. Jefferies Live Blogs Mad Men Tonight

Last Thursday was the great Mad Men fake out, when AMC unnecessarily reran episode 5. So I'm still in the catbird seat over at newcritics tonight at 10:00 p.m. ET. My intro essay last week (scroll down under the detective teams) referenced Leave Her to Heaven. I'm afraid tonight it is Rear Window--call me Jefferies. I fractured my ankle last night running, then tripping, flying and falling, enroute...
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Sunday, September 23, 2007

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