nudle

Game day.

Usually I couldn't care less about football (and I'm the only one in my entire family who feels that way, which makes me feel that way even more) but I couldn't help but get caught up in this year's Seahawks saga. The rivalry, the stories, and going with Ewan to the playoff game for his birthday--being part of the whole scene made me appreciate this game that most Americans spend so much time and energy watching and talking about. Obsessing over. Then there was the sudden superstardom of Richard Sherman. Drama!

We saw friends at the game (and they're in New Jersey now, lucky fans).

Han and his friend, J., demonstrating the Seahawks' fierceness.

Our Superbowl party (for four) will include meat and beer and, probably, folding clothes.

How will it all play out?

Musical theater.

This morning Iona was singing "Tomorrow" from her current favorite musical, Annie, so I went online and bought the song for her. As I sang along to "Tomorrow" with Iona with my eyes full of sentimental tears I was aware that it's unhip and unintellectual to love musical theater. But I do love it.

I remember being in the checkout line at Whole Foods a couple years ago, and my favorite checkout person and health club barista J.P. (who is also an actor) was speaking disdainfully with his coworker about Wicked, which I had just seen and loved. This is a guy who went to New York City just to see the Tom Stoppard Coast of Utopia trilogy. I think that nine-hour extravaganza, about which almost every theatergoer in London and New York was agog, would have bored me senseless. I was glad J.P. wasn't addressing me, so I could stay in the closet.

I think musical theater is in my blood, though I'm probably the least musical person in our family. My dad, a terrific singer, was in multiple community productions as I grew up. I remember Fiddler on the Roof and Music Man, but I know there were others. When Ewan and I went to New York last year we saw Spring Awakening, which appealed to my light and dark sides; it's musical theater and it's about sex and has bad words and dark subject matter. Chorus Line fits this category too, and I bet Cabaret does, though I haven't seen it. I want to read Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories first.

It's a great thing about being a mother, that I get to re-explore all those old musicals with impunity. Let's see. I need to get Annie, Music Man, Cats, Fiddler and Singin' in the Rain, to start. And My Fair Lady. We'll wait until she's eight for South Pacific, and sixteen for Spring Awakening. Of course, I'm going to have to figure out how to round out her education. Maybe we'll see the plays of Coast of Utopia when she's sixteen. Surely by then they'll have been made into movies. For that, I can wait.

Play me.

Libertine movie review.

I've become a movie watching asshole. I can't help it. Since I've been learning more about making a story, I analyze devices in real time. Out loud.

But. While I'll sit and pick a story apart but I'm pretty much a libertine when it comes to movies. I'm loose. I'm easy. I can be entertained by most of them.

Last night (after coming in halfway through Frantic and half-watching it quite happily) I watched Enchanted April. I saw it a long time ago, and this time I loved it just as much. Ah, the costumes. Oh, the sensuality. Lordy, the scenery. It's such a lulling picture, but (in my debauched opinion) a beautiful one to be taken seriously.

Tonight Ewan and I watched I am Legend. I even enjoyed that. I mean, Will Smith is easy on the eyes. And it's cute that his daughter was in the movie. Okay, the CGI baddies are bad in more than one way. They're, like, bad and stupid-looking. And there were many, many glaring inconsistencies and plot sillinesses. But Dr Smith also had a nice apartment, especially for being post-apocalyptic and all. So that was fun to look at too. But to say much more would be spoiling, so see it for yourself. Or don't, and Netflix Enchanted April instead. It would be more rewarding, trust me.

I wanted to tape my mouth shut during the movie, if only just to stay married. But it's been a weekend of no filters where my mouth's concerned, with all the adoption stuff, so I guess I figured why stop now?

Next libertine review: Pan's Labyrinth.

The Diary of Anne Frank.

Don't read this if you don't want to feel horrible.

I just came home after watching Steppenwolf do The Diary of Anne Frank and I feel desolate. I can't stop crying and I'm all blotchy and snotty and my head aches. I hate sitting there in a nearly silent theater crying while trying not to make noise. I wanted to scream HOW COULD THIS BE REAL?

Watching the play I kept thinking of Iona, who is dramatic on a daily basis (a moment-to-moment basis). Anne was thirteen when they went into hiding, and full of drama and strong feelings in the same way Iona is, and Claire Elizabeth Saxe plays her cute and girly in the same way Iona is cute and girly. I keep thinking, how could any human torture someone like this (much less torture anyone)? How can we do these things to each other? How is it possible that Iona is the same species as the monsters that killed all those people, killed a sixteen-year-old girl after starving her, shaving her head, making her take all her clothes off and stand behind barbed wire, exposed, covered with flies, having lost her whole family, her heart broken? How do I protect my daughter from monsters? I'm going upstairs to get in bed next to Iona so I can listen to her breathe.

The Pillowman.

I went to a play by myself this evening, The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh at Steppenwolf. I don't go see that many plays, though I finally, after fourteen years of talking about it, bought season tickets to Steppenwolf. By chance the last play I saw there was another by McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

Dark, both plays are very effing dark. I had a hard time with McDonagh's darkness last time, but this time I was on my feet when the cast came out for a curtain call. The Pillowman is a fantastic play and the acting tonight was splendid. Lots of emphatic spit-talking. Plus there's a cool factor to Steppenwolf Theatre Company that has always turned me on.

The Pillowman is about a writer who writes horrible stories about children being killed in various ways. He's terribly proud of his stories, and it's believable that they're good stories in spite of the dreadful subject matter, and he's adorable, so when he's interrogated by cops working for a totalitarian state I found myself pulling for him, then for the cops, then for the writer's brain-damaged brother. It was cool the way they did that.

I loved seeing the play by myself, though it would have been nice to have a drink with someone at intermission. As it was I had no drinks and no one to talk to or share laughs with throughout the performance, and this made the experience intense. I'm half-tempted to donate my other ticket to someone I don't know for the rest of the season because of that intensity. It's all you, baby, and you don't have to think about how the other person is reacting, whether or not they like the story, whether or not the gruesomeness is freaking them out, and you don't have to laugh out loud if you only feel like laughing inside.

Corteo.

We went to see Corteo last night and I loved it. Lithe bodies doing impossible feats! Exquisite costumes and beautiful sets! Sexy engineering! What could be better, really? I found it inspirational. I sat and watched and wept with my mouth open the whole time.

One of the things I liked best was Ewan's reaction. It made me enjoy it even more when he gasped or chuckled, possibly because he so often doesn't react.