Friday, May 9, 2008

Wishful thinking

What will happen when Obama wins? Twitterers predict, and Kottke collects.

Park peeve

I think that I shall scream if I read one more travel article that refers to my fair city's beautiful Forest Park as "a smaller version of New York City's Central Park" or "like Central Park in miniature" or "in many ways comparable to giants such as New York's Central Park". Let's get this straight once and for all:

• Central Park, New York City, NY: 843 acres
• Forest Park, St. Louis, MO: 1,293 acres

Now, please do not misunderstand: Central Park is lovely, and I have passed many a happy hour there. And I am aware that size isn't everything; certainly in terms of the sheer number of things crammed into it, Central Park would take the biscuit for its variety of activities. Both, of course, are beautiful and free for the use of the public, as it should be.

But Forest Park is neither an upstart (opened just three years after Central Park, during a period in the late 19th century that saw many cities develop massive urban parklands) nor a pipsqueak (approximately 50 percent more spacious than its East Coast cousin). So please, travel writers, spend a few seconds with Google or a decent encyclopedia and get it right.

And since you asked, some of my very favorite spring and summer activities are centered in the Park: strolling through our (free!) Zoo to visit the fauna at lunch time, taking a picnic to the Shakespeare Festival (presenting Richard III later this month), seeing a show at The Muny or having drinks by Post-Dispatch Lake at The Boathouse. Care to join me?

Thursday, May 8, 2008

That reminds me, I need Coppertone

Ah, a dog's life. That's one of Annie Leibovitz' photos of Mark Wahlberg for Vanity Fair in 1993. Here's a piece from CBS' 48 Hours from around that time about Marky Mark and the photo shoot.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Is it Monday yet?

I think my hip just spontaneously broke

Up there? That's 17-year-old Jonathan Lipnicki. Yes, "the kid from Jerry Maguire". Yeah, I know. I feel incredibly old now too. More Teen Beat-type pics here.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Miss Birdseye, Miss LuPone and misplaced criticism

A piece in the souvenir program for the current Broadway revival of Gypsy casts some aspersions on Ethel Merman's performance as Rose, attributing to Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim assertions that the Merm's acting wasn't up to snuff. (I heard Sondheim talk extensively about the original staging of "Rose's Turn" at the Jewish Book Fair here a few years ago, including the same sentiments that Merman was a rote actress.)

It's a shame that anyone feels the need to disparage a prior—and in this case iconic—performance in an attempt to promote a new one but in the end, these are simply opinions and shouldn't diminish the star's legacy. For my money (and I've spent a fair amount of it, seeing Patti LuPone in three different productions of Gypsy now), both Merman and LuPone were thrilling in the role. Different, yes, but thrilling nonetheless.

Monday, May 5, 2008

No shoes

Perhaps you've noticed an uptick in activity around these parts, which can probably be directly attributed to one thing: the theatre season is ended (for me, professionally, anyway), which means a greater amount of spare time (read: "more than none"). For the past several months, whatever hours weren't given over to flacking and sleeping were spent on consulting gigs, spreading the gospel of weblogs and social media, and even developing a few non-personal website projects, while this site went fallow. The cobbler's children etcetera etcetera.

But this past weekend I carved out a couple of hours, spent some time sprucing up the joint and doing a little spring cleaning hereabout. Fact is, I missed the place, and I really, really hope to be giving it at least a little attention every day. After all, I'll need somewhere to announce those aforementioned website projects to the few hundred or so of you who still stop by here regularly. Some sort of web masochists, you are, I suppose.

One change in particular to note: I've jiggered things so that posts to the ever-more-inaccurately-named The Daily Brad will now show up in this space, as well as in their traditional home over there. This isn't intentioned to signal a return to anything like daily publishing of tidbits from My So-Called Lifestyle, but I hope it at least encourages me to write somewhat more than annually. (To celebrate this subtle shift, I'll start by republishing one of my first and favorite Daily Brad bits. Look for it following this post.)

All of this excitement comes amidst a little frenzy of activity in my offline life as well, including some home remodeling, a decade-overdue deep cleaning of the basement, a minor medical "procedure", not a small amount of travel and a rekindled, complicated long-distance romance.

And you get to peek over my shoulder for it all. You poor, wretched creatures. You have no idea what you're in for. And neither do I.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Luke and Noah auf Deutsch

Despite being a big Days of Our Lives fan throughout high school and college, I don't really follow the soaps anymore. I've got several friends who are simply mad for the Luke and Noah storyline on As the World Turns, but the tortoise-like pace with which those boys were permitted to proceed to their first big kiss was enormously frustrating.

For my money, a much better boy-on-boy storyline is the trials of Olli and Christian on the German soaper Verbotene Liebe ("Forbidden Love"). You can catch up on the backstory here; on Youtube, a fan has thoughtfully subtitled the clips in English.

I have a big crush on Jo Weil, who plays frisky, puppy-dog-eyed Oliver Sabel (Olli). Hubba hubba.