We're back on stage! Malcolm Kogut and I will tread the boards at Steamer No. 10 Theatre (500 Western Avenue, Albany, NY) at 7 PM on New Year's Eve. Below is a promo video we made to celebrate the season. More info? Go to our Songs to Amuse website.
Words and Music
Observations and opinions essayed in pursuit of a sensibly cultured life.
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Friday, December 23, 2022
The Last Laugh
Friday, December 16, 2022
The Staff of Life
From the Cookbook Shelf Dept.: Every December, for many years, Metroland magazine would court advertisers by putting out buying guides. As the house restaurant reviewer, I chose my favorite cookbooks of the waning year, trying to avoid the excessively celebrity-driven. Here’s what was on my plate, so to speak, a decade ago.
Friday, December 09, 2022
Going Whole Hog
EVER CONTEMPLATED “CHUCKING IT ALL” and moving to a farm? Shrugging off the heavy mantle of living and working in the corporate world in order to get back to the earth sounds wonderfully noble and romantic, allowing you to glory in the knowledge that you’re providing healthy food for yourself and your neighbors. I know people who have done this. They knew they were in for a work schedule unlike anything they’d known in the nine-to-five world. They just didn’t anticipate how punishing it would be.
I’m no fan of the type of memoir in which an eager diarist with little self-awareness chronicles an egocentric journey through what usually turns out to be the scorn of an unsympathetic world. This is emphatically not that kind of book. There’s no hand-wringing; likewise, there’s no feel-good cliché-mongering or strident preaching. But it is a story of growth and revelation. Gaydos tells it in a deceptively simple, matter-of-fact manner, her first-person perspective giving a sense of immediacy to the story.
Friday, December 02, 2022
Breaking the Silence
TRY TO RECALL a dinner or other social event at which you felt entranced, uplifted. You either were falling in love or listening to a fascinating party guest, the kind who has captivating stories to tell and knows how to deliver a punch line.
Susan Fleming Marx was clearly that kind of party guest. She quit a mediocre but promising movie career to wed Harpo Marx, and they had one of those marriages that defies statistics (and the matrimonial track records of Harpo’s brothers).
Just as quickly, she entered the movies. “There had to be at least a half-dozen girls in that chorus with a burning ambition to act. I was not one of them.” Nevertheless, she was selected by Adolph Menjou to star with him in his movie “The Ace of Cads.” “I’ve since learned that (it) is now a lot film. Well, thank heaven for small miracles! I’d shudder to think of anyone actually seeing me in this thing.”
Friday, November 25, 2022
Some Like It Hot
It’s not as if we were pandemic-demoralized; far from it. We’ve learned to live reclusively and are quite happy in this social cocoon. However, Thanksgiving invited us to re-think the holiday menu and treat our handful of guests to something rather unprecedented for this event: Szechuan Hot Pot, also known as Steamboat or Shabu-Shabu. The menu is below; our slide show of Thanksgiving menus past is here.
Friday, November 18, 2022
Making the Most of Mozart
From the Theater Vault Dept.: Back in 1984, when the University at Albany had a theater department of some standing, they offered an ambitious series of productions. Amadeus was still something of an undiscovered item until the movie came out that year, which coincided with the production described below, first in an eager advance, then in a disappointed review.
PIANIST ALFRED BRENDEL, a world-class performer of Mozart's music, dismissed the hit play Amadeus quite simply: “It’s not an accurate portrait of the man. The playwright took his material from a few letters Mozart wrote to his sister, letters that were very playful, and very scatological.”
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Saltzmann and Strolle in Amadeus |
On the other hand, a friend of mine who has long insisted that she’d rather be boiled in oil than listen to opera confessed that the opera sequences in the film of Amadeus weren’t bad at all! That kind of influence is worth the whinnying of a dozen stuffy newspapers.
There’s no doubt that the film plays up Mozart’s manic side, and it’s that very quality that SUNYA’s Bill Leone thinks needn’t be overdone for the theater: “Mozart is a man who knew his society, he just had moments of insensitivity.” Leone is following his recent success with Shakespeare at SUNYA with a production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, which Leone will direct and (for half of the run) act in. Leone has described the themes of the play as ‘being about “uniqueness and irresponsibility of talent. The struggle between a man and his god.” It opens at SUNYA’s Lab Theater on Tuesday for a two-week run.
Friday, November 11, 2022
The New Fable of the Speedy Sprite
Guest Blogger Dept.: We have heard your cries: “More Ade! More Ade!” And here he is, with one of the longer fables he was pleased to write following the great success of their too-brief predecessors. He got some extra mileage out of this one, as it also appeared in the Indianapolis Star under the title The New Fable of the Sprightly Sprite.
ONE MONDAY MORNING a rangy and well-conditioned Elfin of the Young Unmarried Set, yclept Loretta, emerged into the Sunlight and hit the Concrete Path with a ringing Heel. This uncrowned Empress of the 18th Ward was a she-Progressive assaying 98 per cent. pure Ginger. Instead of trailing the ever onward Parade, she juggled the Baton at the head of the Push.
She went to the office of the exclusive Kennel Club and entered the Chow Ki-Yi for the next Bench Show. At the Clearing House for K. M.'s she filed a loud call for a Cook who could cook. Then she cashed a check, ordered a pound of Salted Nuts (to be delivered by Special Wagon at once), enveloped a ball of Ice Cream gooed with Chocolate, and soon, greatly refreshed, swept down on a Department Store.
A Chenille Massacre was in full swing on the 3d floor, just between the Porch Furniture and Special Clothing for Airmen. Loretta took a run and jump into the heaving mass of the gentler Division. She came out at 10.53 with her Sky Piece badly listed to Port and her toes flattened out, but she was 17 cents to the Good. Three hearty Cheers!