Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062.

Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong.  What we did *was* wrong.  But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are.  What do you care?  You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.  You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.  Correct?  That’s the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning.  We were brainwashed.

I’m a big Elizabeth Taylor fan - and an even bigger Paul Newman fan.  So it should come as no surprise that ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ is a favorite of mine.

Brick: What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?
Maggie: Just staying on it I guess, long as she can.

Dame Elizabeth Taylor passed away today…very sad news about this legend, but what a life she had.  Well done, Liz, well done!

This makes me happy.

robo-rainbow from mudlevel on Vimeo.

The story of Vivian Maier’s street photography is an interesting one, as is her work…A Chicago nanny for around 40 years, over 100,000 of her negatives (including loads of undeveloped rolls) were auctioned off a few years ago and she has now posthumously acquired a very nice following.  An exhibition of her work just opened at Chicago Cultural Center.  You can also help back a documentary film project on this insightful photographer.  Viva Vivian!

Living in NYC for 5 years enabled me to see lots of exceptional theater - for cheap!  My favorite show then was and remains Caroline, or Change - a musical I saw in 2004 that despite receiving critical acclaim had a relatively short run.

Relevant, smart, moving, clever, funny, toe-tapping.  With exceptional performances and music that made me buy the soundtrack.  Written by Tony Kushner, this story was inspired by his experiences as a Jewish kid growing up in Louisiana with an African-American maid around the time of JFK’s assassination.  Here’s a good segment about the pre-production work for this staging.

Getting to watch Tonya Pinkins in this role was amazing - my goosebumps’ goosebumps’ had goosebumps!  Although she received a Tony nomination that year for this performance, the award went to Idina Menzel for Wicked instead (I saw Idina twice in Wicked twice and still say Tonya was tops).  See for yourself -a bootleg version of Tonya performing ‘Lot’s Wife’ can be viewed here and you can also see her perform it on the Tony’s here.  I wish they had made a DVD of this production…Sigh.  I would buy loads and pass them out like candy - or medicine.

I’ve already done several posts over on K1-D2 about The Purple Lady, so I’ll keep it simple in this post.  If you don’t know about her, then click here and here to learn more about this Suffolk legend.

After I learned about the recent return of The Purple Lady, I also learned that she and her family had been Googling around and had found me writing about her on our website.  The Purple Lady wanted me to come to her 85th Birthday Party!  Well, of course I happily attended

The new animation from BLU is completely sick and inspiring…