Let it Flow: For Marlo-With Love

Just when I had pretty much accepted the fact that the fall season on Broadway was going to be a complete and utter disappointment, I saw something that lit a spark of optimism in my heart.

Last night, along with fellow graduates of Brown University, I was invited to a performance of the new emo/rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, followed by a talk with one of the show's producers, Oskar Eustis. Eustis, who looks a bit like Paul Bunyon with a beard and a mop of brown hair, is the artistic director of the Public Theater where the production of this show began its life. The genesis of the idea to put the life and political career of the 7th President of the United States to an emo/rock score apparently involved a playwright and a composer with completely different theatrical agendas: one was fascinated by a course in which he studied Andrew Jackson, and one just wanted to do something related to emo kids and their subculture. The result, as my friend pointed out, is a "reese's pieces" of a musical and it totally works.

Part of the reason it works is that it treats American politics of the 19th century with the same irreverence that South Park treats Oprah Winfrey and her private parts: nothing is sacred. Jackson, played superbly by the Julliard-trained young actor Benjamin Walker, is a gun-toting, tight jean and eye liner wearing loose canon, who throws chairs when he doesn't get what he wants and sings about how life "sucks" when his parents are killed by Indians. He also spills a lot of blood and not just when he conquers the Spaniards, the British and the Seminoles in Florida. He and his true love Rachel like to cut themselves when they are happily in love and also when they despair. The fact that the audience laughs and cringes at the same time pretty much sums up the overall tone of the show.

Walker, as Jackson, is such a commanding stage presence that he masters the appeal of America's first populist president, whose dubious claim to fame is how he solved the "Indian Problem" by forcing the Indians to keep moving further West until there was nowhere left to go (but onto reservations.) As serious as the issues are that Jackson faces when he finally becomes President in 1829 (after being robbed of the Presidency the first time around in a conspiracy of the Bush/Gore variety) the show continues to mine his political and personal relationships for their humor and resonance with contemporary political shenanigans. Jackson is the "people's president," but when he gets into office he finds that the populace doesn't know what the hell they want. And he sings "it's impossible to get anything done in Washington." That tune sounds so familiar.

It doesn't take long to get the feel for the bizarre juxtaposition of history and popular culture that is this superb production. The set designers have turned the entire Jacobs theater into a combination Victorian-Goth fun house, complete with blood red walls, a stuffed horse hanging upside down over the audience, numerous chandeliers, and at least two electric guitar players on stage at all times. The music and lyrics are loud, brash and a lot of fun. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson may just be the only bloody good thing in the fall theater season.

Correction: ZuckerBERG

Given that one cannot escape the name Mark Zuckerberg these days (it appeared in the conclusion of an article in The New York Times "Week in Review" section just yesterday, and in today's interview with actor Armie Hammer in nymetro), I felt it my duty to issue a correction: the "berg" in Zuckerberg is "erg" not "urg."

I spelled it wrong in my discussion of The Social Network in last night's post. Since the god of Facebook seems to see all and know all, I just wanted to make sure he didn't see my post and let it be known throughout the universe that I misspelled his name. I should be so lucky.

Looking for Mr. Wowbar

It turns out that my problem is not so much finding the time to see all of the shows and movies and art exhibits on my list for this fall, but finding the time to write about them. Although it doesn't show with my less than speedy reviews, I have made a real dent in my movie, theater and art exhibit list; although, for theater I have veered away from my original plan into smaller, more experimental plays, in part because someone else bought the tickets.

Part of my hesitance to write about what I have seen so far is that I'm still waiting to be wowed. I can't say that I've been thoroughly disappointed with the movies, just slightly underwhelmed. Woody Allen's latest, You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger, feels like a series of vignettes about the unhappy lives of young and old married couples, but never coalesces into a graceful whole. It's a shame the characters are so despicable, because the actors playing them are superb, particularly Gemma Jones as the jilted wife of Anthony Hopkins.

Of the two "techie" movies, Catfish and The Social Network, the latter is definitely more intriguing, no matter how much the former is billed as a "mystery." I can't say that Catfish is a worthless documentary, but its revelation that online relationships can be dangerous is only new if you have been living with the Amish for the past few years. The Social Network, on the other hand, portrays Mark Zuckerburg, the creator of Facebook, as such an arrogant, brilliant asshole that it's pure pleasure to see his friends and enemies go to battle with him in a major lawsuit. Like Facebook itself, the movie is the Mark Zuckerburg show, and seeing that show once is enough. You will not be clamoring for a sequel.

I will write about the plays as soon as I've actually seen one that is on my list. As for the art exhibits, "Abstract Expressionism in New York" at MoMa is so huge that I accidentally skipped two floors and still felt like I needed to go back to fully absorb the one floor that I did see.

Clearly, I'm not done yet. There is plenty left to see and plenty of time to be wowed before the first snowflake falls in New York.

School Daze

For those of us who have spent most of our lives in school, either as a student or teacher, every fall is a fresh start. The people in charge of the arts in New York also seem to be on the perpetual school calendar, because New York in the fall is a burst of cultural fresh air. The 85 degree weather is throwing me off a little, but there are so many new museum shows, new plays and new movies that I want to see, that not even wearing shorts and sandals at the end of September can dampen my enthusiasm.

Here is just a partial list of the things I plan on seeing (and reviewing) this fall: Abstract Expressionist New York, at MoMa (Oct.3-April 25), The Whitney's show Modern Life:Edward Hopper and His Time (Oct.28-April10); unlike in art, this fall the theater is all about the old masters: great plays by Shakespeare, Lillian Hellman, Noel Coward, George Bernard Shaw and even a play based on Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises are either already in theaters or opening in New York in the next month. The Hemingway play is the only one that, for now, is a short train ride away in Philadelphia.

My movie list is long, and it includes Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, two movies about Facebook, Catfish and The Social Network, romantic comedies HeartBreaker with Vanessa Paradis (Johnny Depp's real-life paramour ) and Love and Other Drugs, a movie about viagra, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway.

I'm also going to have to see The King's Speech, with my favorite Brit, Colin Firth, who is due for an Oscar and according to film festival buzz might get one for his portrayal of a stuttering King George VI, the current Queen Elizabeth's father. Then, if I'm feeling really cynical, I might squeeze in I'm Still Here the faux documentary about Joaquin Phoenix, and Picture Me where super-skinny, super-rich models complain about how overworked and underfed they are.

How am I going to do all this in the next few months? That's a good question given that fall also means back to work for me. The papers have already started piling up. The students are already e-mailing for conferences. But it's fall and I can dream.

Will the real Slim Shady stand up?

I used to think that it was inevitable: as I got older I would become more conservative. It seems the opposite is happening. The longer I live the more I realize how my children have pushed me to become more open-minded. And I can't thank them enough.

When Eminem first became a household name my son was thirteen years old. I picked him up from camp one summer and he could recite all of the words to Eminem's "Without Me." I was appalled. Fast forward six years and I find myself defending Eminem's First Amendment rights in a Facebook discussion with a group of intelligent women who are all moms of young children. The women object to the the monster hit song " The Way You Lie."In it Eminem raps about an abusive relationship where the couple keep breaking up and getting back together. At one point the rapper threatens to tie his girlfriend to the bed and "set this house on fire" if she tries to leave again.

The chorus of "The Way You Lie" is sung by Rihanna, whose famous abuse at the hands of her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown makes her participation either very ironic or very stupid. I refuse to believe the latter. If anything, the fact that it incites controversy shows that the song may actually bring attention to the subject of abuse and afford an opportunity for parents to discuss it with their kids. Telling kids that the music is junk (or forbidden) and they shouldn't listen to it at all will send them straight to the Internet to download it. Anyway, isn't that what our parents told us about rock music in the 70's, including classics like Led Zeppelin and The Who?

If it's any consolation, my son the former Eminem fan, won't listen to Eminem anymore. "He's way too commercial now," he said recently. He will, however, listen to Beethoven and Led Zeppelin. They do grow up eventually, musically speaking, for the most part unscathed.

Holding Out for a Hero

There are very few women in popular culture these days that I would want my fifteen-year-old daughter to idolize. I know that Lady Gaga is making a statement about individuality, but does that always have to involve something see through that shows her breasts?

Fortunately, there are several young female characters running around in a book and a movie that I would call genuine role models, and perhaps even heroines. The first is a character named Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) in a film called Winter's Bone.

Visually, the movie is haunting, like a dark, rural painting where Andrew Wyeth meets Edward Hopper in the Ozarks. But more than the setting, the young girl at the center of the story is seventeen years old, responsible for her entire household, including two younger siblings and her mentally incapacitated mother, with absolutely no help from a missing, meth cooking father. Yet Ree is so determined and so capable that it's impossible for her to do anything but fight and survive. Any teenager who can teach her little brother to shoot a squirrel and cook it for supper has my vote for the MTV movie awards' "Bravest Film Chick" of the Year (new category).

The literary heroines that I want my daughter to idolize are the three women in the novel The Help, set in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. One privileged young white woman and two black maids set out to write a book within a book describing what it is like to be "the help" in a white home in the pre-civil rights south. The three characters are very different, but all three risk everything they have for a cause they believe in. They have so much pride and determination and love of family and justice, that I would make this book a mandatory read in every tenth grade classroom across the country. And it's historical fiction so it goes down a lot smoother than a history text book.

Here's to role models for young women, real or imagined.

Send in the Clowns

I have always wondered how comedians manage to perform when they are sad. What if they are genuinely depressed and don't feel like being funny? This thought crossed my mind again last Wednesday night when I was at Comix comedy club on West 14th street listening to a lineup of stand up comedians who work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The man himself wasn't there, of course, but his executive producer and writer Rory Albanese was, as was one of his funniest correspondents, John Oliver.

Oliver, with his very proper-sounding British accent reminded the crowd that if this had been 250 years ago he would have been barking orders at us instead of jokes. He joked about the waning American empire, as evidenced by some of our most ridiculous TV game shows, and he had a rather long, imaginary conversation onstage with his father about deciding to tell a joke involving a certain part of his father's anatomy. There was a hint of sadness there, but only in his effort to exit the joke gracefully, which was impossible.

The surprise guest of the evening was comedian Jim Gaffigan, who has absolutely nothing to do with The Daily Show but is very, very funny. I happen to know this because my son is a big fan and has recited numerous Gaffigan jokes about food. This particular evening he went on about McDonald's and how much we love to hate the place. He pointed out that our expectations should be low when the mascot is a "pedophile clown from the 70's." If he was sad that evening it didn't show; it must help if you can make a crowd of people laugh.

I once asked author Michael Crichton if he ever wakes up and doesn't feel like writing. His response was "if I was an airline pilot, I couldn't just say I don't feel like flying today. " So I guess the best advice for comedians and writers alike is, "smile, though your heart is breaking." And go to a comedy club once in a while if you want to see how it's done.

A LIttle Night (and Day) Music

Last Thursday I stood in line at 10:00am along 59th street near Fifth Avenue with throngs of Sting fans. I have never been a huge Sting fan and only know him for the few Police songs that are burned into my brain from college frat parties. But a friend of mine from work is a fanatic, and she needed someone to share the experience of jumping up and down, screaming and clapping on cue for his free outdoor concert taped for the Early Show on CBS. I didn't watch the show the next day, but apparently I was on television for a tenth of a second if you watched with a high powered telescope.

Mary, my friend, said that I was the perfect person to bring to this event, which I wasn't sure to take as a compliment or an insult. My brief impressions of Sting , from a very close spot near the stage, were that he still has a good voice, that despite being 58 years old he makes everyone around him look totally uncool, and that his real fans are the ones that have been singing the words to 'Roxanne' since 1978. As far as musical revelations go, there were none, other than the fact that a good back up orchestra can make even a mediocre song sound like a symphony.

On that same evening, I went to Lincoln center to meet my mother, step-father, sister and niece for dinner and dancing at the Midsummer Night Swing outdoor dance festival. Midsummer Night Swing is a unique experience that can only be described as New York at its most ridiculous and joyful. Hundreds of people come out to Damrosch Park behind the New York State Theater to dance to live music of a different genre every night for three weeks.

The night we were there it was "Disco." Donna Summer and the Bee Gees were well represented, as were a full range of ages and dance abilities. One elderly gentleman in his 80s managed to swing more dance partners around the floor than other men half his age, and the girls he danced with couldn't stop smiling. Some of the couples clearly practiced before they came, but other people just grabbed whoever was willing and made up the moves as they went along. It's free if you remain outside the inner dance area, and $17 if you want to dance closer to the live music. Most people just dance wherever they are standing, with whomever they lay eyes on.

The only one who wasn't having a blast was my 20-year-old niece. She just couldn't get into the 70's music. She left to meet some friends at a bar. My sister and I paid our tributes to Donna Summer by dancing together to "I Will Survive," and then we made our way out past the crowds and the glittering fountain to find our own drinks and shared memories.

The Kids May Be All Right, But The Movie Isn't

Suzanne Tenner/Focus Features

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in “The Kids Are All Right.”

Lest anyone is under the false impression that I love every movie and every theater that I attend in New York City, I have to take a minute to write a short, negative review of "The Kids Are All Right."

The movie, which just opened on Friday to superlative reviews, has a stellar cast including Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and one of my favorite actors, Mark Ruffalo. But ironically, it is the "kids," played by Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson who really are the only thing that is right with this movie.

The story is about a lesbian couple with two teenage children, Joni age 18, and Laser, age 15. The boy --probably wishing that someone else had named him--wants to seek out the children's sperm-donor father. With the help of his sister, they find him and arrange to meet him.

The donor dad turns out to be an ultra-cool, motorcycle riding single dude named Paul, played by Ruffalo, who runs an organic restaurant and farm. For the daughter, it's love at first sight, although the son reserves judgment for a second visit. Ultimately Paul wins everyone over, including one of the moms, with his easy going charm and non-parental, laid back attitude. It makes sense that the kids want to spend more and more time with him, and he starts to become attached to them as well.

Once Paul is thrown into the mix of this nontraditional family, things gradually take a turn for the worse. The one mom, played by Annette Bening, dislikes him instantly, but she is so uptight and unpleasant it seems she dislikes everyone, including her wife, Jules. Jules played by Julianne Moore, has a very different reaction. She agrees to take on Paul's overgrown backyard as a start-up project for her new landscaping business, and is just as attracted to him as her kids are. They wind up in bed every time she comes over. It's all fun and no work for him, given that the kids are beautiful and smart and practically grown, and the affair with Jules, like everything else in his life, seems casual at first.

The movie is touted as dealing with a very cutting edge subject, gay marriage and parenthood, but the problem is that every relationship seems forced, except for the heterosexual affair. The two women don't have anything in common, and one wonders how they became a couple in the first place. The character of Paul, who is demonized in the end, is totally confused, as is the audience, as to Jules' passionate involvement with him and then subsequent rejection. Granted, he's kind of a smarmy asshole, but he doesn't deserve this.

As hard as writer/director Lisa Cholodenko tries to make this into a real family, the actresses are not able to pull off any genuine feeling between the two main characters. I really didn't care about their relationship in the end. The only thing that is pitch perfect is the behavior of the two teenagers. The fact that they reject their mothers and then their father, but need all of them desperately, is right on the money.

Al Wants a Pound of Flesh, And He Usually Gets It

JOAN MARCUS

Al Pacino (right) plays Shylock in this Central Park production of Shakespeare's controversial play. The cast also includes Lily Rabe (left) as Portia and Byron Jennings as Antonio.

Al Pacino is not the only reason to try and see the Shakespeare in the Park version of The Merchant of Venice. He's great, but so is the entire cast, half of whom I recognized from at least one television sitcom, including Jesse Tyler Ferguson from my current favorite Modern Family.

Part of the pleasure of this production is that the language and the plot are made so accessible by the actors. They all enunciate wildly. And the production itself, thankfully, does not try to change the setting to war torn Europe or Venice 2000, or some other unnecessarily futuristic landscape. Granted it's hard to listen to the tirades against "the Jew" (Shylock) by the Christians (the rest of the characters) with a politically correct, 21st century sensibility. That is why the play is so seldom performed, which is a shame, because while it may bring into focus the accepted anti-semitism of Shakespeare's time, my interpretation is that it doesn't condone it. Shylock is too complex a character for that.

Also, Portia is one of the smartest most fully developed female characters in any play I've ever seen outside of a Wendy Wasserstein play. And Lily Rabe who plays her is the best member of the cast by far; Al was good, but a couple of times when he starts to rant I couldn't help feeling like he was doing a Jewish version of the colonel in Scent of A Woman.

One piece of advice. Bring your own snacks and drinks because the line at the snack bar at intermission is so long that only the NYC marathon runners at the front got served before the Second Act.

Does Al Pacino have eyes? Find out tomorrow!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's review of Al Pacino as Shylock in the Central Park presentation of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice."

And please do a reverse rain dance so that we can actually see the show tonight!!

What a Piece of Work Is (This Wo)Man

What makes people happy? Is it their children? Not according to the cover article of this week's New York Magazine, whose title is "I Love My Children. I Hate My Life." Is it their friends and family? Some studies say that's the key, and yet family also seems to be the main topic of conversation on most therapists' couches. Is it money? That's so 1980's. The sociologists doing the research may want to check out Joan Rivers' documentary. She has the answer: it's work, and in her very funny, very watchable movie she proves that she still deserves to be doing it at age 75.

There are some very moving moments in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," although when Rivers tears up about having to fire her longtime manager and good friend Billy her eyes are the only thing that betray her sentiment. The rest of her face simply doesn't move. But her notorious plastic-surgery induced face, and her self-deprecation about it, makes her life or death struggle to stay in the show biz game that much more poignant in the movie.

There are numerous clips of the young Joan with Johnny Carson and others, pre-surgery. At that time she was not famous for her looks but for her cutting edge, raunchy humor and the fact that she was a woman comedian. If you didn't already know, the movie makes clear that she was a genuine pioneer for women in comedy. But God forbid you call her a "comedy icon." One poor guy does and gets a quick "I don't want to be an icon. Fuck you," in return.

In her advanced age she remains an outsider in what is still a male dominated industry and her anger fuels her comedy. She struggles to get work, except the kind that makes her the butt of the jokes. She accepts that too, for the money, but she doesn't like it. When she is cruelly roasted on Comedy Central by male comedians who are a lot younger and a lot less funny, it's a squirm inducing moment for her and for the audience. You genuinely feel sorry for her. She only half-jokingly advises the audience to "invest wisely when you're younger."

But if anyone has ever made lemonade from lemons, she has. The movie is filled with her jokes, both spontaneous and rehearsed, and they are funny. She doesn't necessarily joke about her misfortunes, and she's had big ones, including the suicide of her husband and partner Edgar. But there is never a joke far behind. She just keeps on going, like a hard, plastic version of the energizer bunny. When her adorable grandson tells her that his friend has three Play Stations and the friend gave him one, she quips "does he have a single grandfather?"

More than anything she loves being center stage, and she is the first to admit it. It makes some of the film's drama a bit suspect, given that she prides herself on being an actress rather than a comedian. But it is still refreshing, and downright inspiring, to hear her talk about how much she loves to work. When she wins "Celebrity Apprentice" and someone congratulates her she quickly retorts, "It's great but it's not an Oscar."

My guess is next March she might have to find another joke, and another gig, when she finds herself a Documentary nominee being asked what she's wearing on the red carpet, instead of doing the asking, for a change.

p.s. One of the things that makes me happy is being able to go to the movies in the afternoon when the kids are away at camp!

Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!

When I saw this portrait of Beatrice Cenci by Guido Reni (1575-1642) in a museum in Rome a few weeks ago, I had no idea why the painter chose to portray this woman with such deep tragedy in her young eyes. I had never heard the story of the Cenci family, nor did I know that it was also the subject of several books, a 1969 movie and a full scale opera. What I learned when I started to look into the Cenci family history was that shocking family drama is not the exclusive domain of our current tabloid culture. Nor is unspeakable cruelty and intrigue merely the subject of the current bestseller, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

As promised, here is a brief synopsis of Beatrice's sordid story: Her father, Francesco Cenci, was a cruel but powerful man who physically abused his children, including Beatrice's two brothers and her step-mother. Although he had been in trouble with the papal courts and was known to be violent and immoral, he was always protected because of his wealth and status. When he went as far as sexually abusing her, Beatrice Cenci plotted to kill her father, with her brothers and step-mother in agreement. She had help from a young guard, who was also her lover. One version of the story claims that they had a child.

I read various accounts of how they did it (drugs, hammer, knife) but ultimately they killed Francesco and threw him off a balcony to make it look like an accident. Despite the sympathy of many Roman citizens, Francesco's position as a nobleman made it imperative that the murderers be punished. Pope Clement VII condemned the family to death for the murder. In 1599, at age 22, Beatrice Cenci was beheaded on a scaffold in Rome. Her brother and step-mother were also killed. Only one younger brother, age twelve, was allowed to live.

If I read this story in a novel or saw it as a play or a movie, I would have thought that it was pure fiction. But really, I should know better by now.

In every era, rich, powerful men (and women) have gotten away with abusing children or adults who they view as weaker or inferior. We have our very own Cenci stories: just ask Nancy Grace. Joran Van der Sloot thought he got away with murder in Aruba and in Peru, as did his father who sought to protect him with his powerful diplomatic influence. George Huguely, who murdered his beautiful Lacrosse-playing girlfriend, clearly didn't think at all, but somehow learned from his wealthy father that he could vent his anger and frustration with no real consequences. Even Tiger Woods, who I don't view as evil or psychotic, used his status and wealth to do things that most men and women would never dream of even trying to get away with.

If life imitates art, then in all of the above cases the perpetrators will pay an irrevocable price for their crimes. At least that's the way it goes in Hollywood and in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Unfortunately, it's too late for Natalee Holloway, Stephany Flores and Yeardley Love. The most we can hope for is that someone will paint their portrait and turn their lives into art.

Sex, Pharmaceuticals and Rock n'Roll

I was going to write about a haunting painting by Guido Reni (1575-1642) that I saw at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome a little over a week ago. The portrait of a young woman, Beatrice Cenci, is not just sensitive and captivating but also has a story behind it that could be ripped out of the 16th century, Italian version of People magazine ("Gente"). But I'm not going to write about the painting in this post. You will just have to read my next post to get the gripping, lurid details of this story of family, aristocracy, incest, murder and betrayal.

The reason I am deferring the sensational Cenci story is that yesterday's New York Times op-ed piece by Camille Paglia entitled "No Sex Please, We're Middle Class," engendered a very interesting discussion in my household this morning. (Only adults over the age of 18 were involved in the discussion).

Paglia, a noted feminist and social commentator, argues that a female version of Viagra is not the answer to the problem of "sexual malaise" that is rampant in our country. It's not quite clear from her essay what the real problem is, because she throws in everything from gender roles to rock n' roll, but her thesis is that interest in sex is a class issue. Middle-class, working women have dulled down their sex drive by becoming too masculine and by emasculating their husbands. The two sexes, albeit in a certain income bracket, have lost the essence of femininity and masculinity. What exactly that essence consists of is not made clear by Paglia, except that it has something to do with shopping at Victoria's Secret.

I am not going to refer directly to personal experience here, except to say that there is nothing that can make a woman feel less sexy than spending twelve hours at home alone with two young kids, with barely a moment to go to the bathroom alone, let alone change out of the spit-up and water paint-laced t-shirt she managed to change into at twelve noon. After a few years of this, reading the paper on the 8am train dressed in a skirt and blouse could be more of a turn on than when Baby undresses Johnny and dances with him to the music of Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me" in Dirty Dancing.

It would make more sense that a couple that can afford to pay a babysitter, and afford to go to the movies and out to dinner one night a week, might actually be able to enjoy each other's company enough to want to have sex. However, after blaming "the white collar realm," Paglia goes on to target Hollywood and video games. Hollywood no longer produces romance with innuendo, she says, and video games turn women into skinny, large-breasted super heroines.

It may be true that Hollywood has lost the art of good writing, but romantic comedies, or, "chick-flicks" as they are currently referred to, abound. I recently saw a charming one called "Letters to Juliet," with Vanessa Redgrave. Okay, so I saw it with my fifteen-year-old, but it was still very romantic. And the vampire "Twilight" series, which has captured the hormones of young girls everywhere has more than enough innuendo, with all that neck biting, heavy petting, and serious eye gazing. I don't think it is worth even discussing any adult male or female who lets video games influence their libido.

But maybe my biggest problem with Paglia's essay is that she offers no support. Sorry, but the English composition teacher in me refuses to accept an argument without some hard core, factual support. She doesn't bother to say what percentage of women are affected by this loss of sexual enthusiasm, what age group they fall into (pre or post-menopausal)or even what their actual income bracket is. She does, however, throw in a nice throwback reference to the "white bourgeoise." Apparently, the only people who are having sex are working-class minorities and country music fans.

My biggest complaint of all is that she doesn't even bother to cite the demographics of who shops at Victoria's Secret! Last time I was there, there were plenty of white, middle class women with their little pink cards in hand. But as my daughter would say at this point, "Mom, TMI!"*


*too much information

Arrivederci Roma

Tonight is our last night in Rome, and we decided to have a quiet, low-key dinner at the hotel. Julia, my fifteen-year old, has now been fully indoctrinated into the coffee culture of Rome and has started drinking caffe latte (with two and a half sugars). She has been a more enthusiastic gastronomic partner than I could have ever hoped for, and therefore I have decided to let her write the post on the food of Rome.

Before I turn it over to Julia, I just want to add the observation that the food, like the presence of a church, can be counted on wherever you go in this city. I can't say I have a favorite meal here, but I could probably eat the pizza at least once a day and gelato twice. And since that is basically what we have been doing, I have been able to avoid trying on any chic Italian clothing. My feet, on the other hand, I found, have not gained weight. The shoes are very, very nice here.

And now for a full food review, I turn it over to Julia:

Buona sera tutti, and I'm sad to say that it is our last night in Rome. My taste buds still tinglefrom a few of the special meals we've had here, and as my Mom's already said, I'm here to give a little overview and review.

It's Italy, and pizza can be found everywhere. Walk down any street, and you're guaranteed to find a "Ristorante Pizzeria" in every other building. Literally. These are your basic diner equivalents, and they've all got amazing thin crust, true Italian style pizza. And as a little side note, the basic "Margherita Pizza" was actually named for a queen of Italy, from right around the time of thecountry's unification in the 1800s. Pasta is everywhere, and as a person who cannot stop eating pasta once it's been made (seriously, at home I eat it out of the strainerl), I've enjoyed the surplus immensely.

Of course, if you want a real meal, with maybe a few more appealing options, any of the little bit nicer restaurants you find will offer the most amazing food. The Italians have a way of preserving the flavors in their food that for whatever reason Americans cannot seem to figure out. Any pasta dish or meat dish or caprese salad from a slightly more upscale restaurant will offer you an experience so good that even when you are stuffed to bursting, you cannot help but put just a little bit more into your mouth. A personal favorite of mine is in fact those caprese salads, and the mozzarella that you will find here (and all over Italy I'm sure) is like no other. It melts in your mouth. A little olive oil, maybe a bite of tomato, and I could live off of this stuff (with some gelato and pasta, of course, and I'll talk more about the former in a second). Oh and the bread. I am particularly partial to French bread, but those Italians know how to work their dough too. In conjunction with the flavors, the sauces they add to the juiciest cuts of meat and the most sumptuous of pastas make my mouth water just thinking of them.

This all sounds quite heavy, and trust me I think I've gained a few pounds eating all of this food, but lighter meals are not lacking in these incredible flavors. We went to one place in the old Jewish ghetto where they served us two platters of salads and raw meat and lighter vegetables with bread. One thing that stands out was the white fish; I don't know how they did it, but it was possibly one of the most delectable things I've ever tasted. Flavors! YUM.

So of course, after your meal, you need something sweet to end the evening (or afternoon, or morning even, if you're not too conservative). Gelaterias are nearly as common as the Pizzerias, and although they're all unique, any single one will give you a nice little treat.
Buon appetito!

Roma

Buona sera from Rome. As I sit at my computer in the lobby of my hotel in Rome at 12:30 am, the sounds from the street are distinct. The night sounds here are different from those in New York. I can hear the sound of cups clinking at the cafe across the street, where a long table of people are still sitting and enjoying their last sips of espresso and smoking cigarettes. There is traffic whizzing by, but it is mostly motorcycles, and the car noises are distinctly those of a manual transmission. And of course, when voices drift in through the open door, they are speaking in a loud but mellifluous language that is foreign to me.

I thought that once I got to Rome I would be so overwhelmed I would want to post here every day. Well, I am overwhelmed, and maybe that's why this is my first post in three days. What my fifteen-year old daughter said about St. Peter's Basilica today applies to my feelings about Rome in general: it's 'ginormous.' Some things are just too big and too important to use either gigantic or enormous alone.

It's not just the physical size of the structures we have seen so far, like the Colosseum or the Vatican Museums or the collection at the Galleria Borghese, that make Rome seem so much bigger than ordinary life. It is also the quantity and the quality of the art and architecture that was created here. Yesterday we saw Bernini's incredible sculpture of Apollo and Daphne at the Borghese; today we sat at a cafe in the Piazza Navona eating gelato with Bernini's fountain, 'Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi,' just a few steps away. We may have craned our necks and been unable to close our mouths along with the throngs at the Sistine Chapel today, but yesterday we traipsed around the Campidoglio which Michelangelo designed as if we were walking around Central Park.

In New York you can see great artists in the top museums, but here these artists are in the city itself. They are the city itself. And it is a hit parade for fans of art and of history: Caravaggio and Raphael, Julius Ceaser and Julius II; Constantine and Canova, among many, many others. And that is just the 'ginormity' of what we are seeing with our eyes. Then there's the food.

But there are only a few cars going by now and the cafe has shut down for the night. So I will have to save the food, and Rome's seduction of my other four senses, for the next post. So for tonight, 'Vado a Dormire!'

Words, Words, Words

There's poignancy in silence. This is not meant to be an excuse for my lack of postings in the last several days, but it is something that I have been thinking about a lot recently. It started about a week ago when I saw a French film called "Mademoiselle Chambon." I read a review of the movie in The Daily News that intrigued me. The review said that although the film was, bien sur, a romantic triangle, it did not have the heavy dose of 'sex and cigarettes' that one normally goes to French cinema to see. I know that even the French are not allowed to smoke at bars anymore, but some cinematic traditions are sacred. Just because they can't smoke in bed afterwards, doesn't mean they should dispense with the act itself. As it turns out, the film includes tremendous passion and even some sex, but the sex is almost an afterthought and, perhaps in a first for French cinema, arguably expendable.

The story of the film is simple: a working class, married father falls in love with his son's school teacher. She is single, lives alone and is also an accomplished classical violinist. That is pretty much it, except that the two main characters portray such depth of agony and emotion with so few words that the film is practically a silent movie. When they do talk to one another, they treat words as if they are precious and extremely powerful. You can imagine then, that a lot goes unsaid, but everything registers on the faces of the actors. You might feel cheated at the end, if what you like in a movie is confrontation and resolution. Everything doesn't tie up into a neat little package punctuated by a lot of "I love yous." But that's what we have Disney, or rather Pixar, for. Thank God I can still go to the Lincoln Plaza Cinema on the West side and leave feeling totally up in the air.

Shortly after I saw this film, I learned that my father has an illness in which he is slowly losing his ability to recall words and complete sentences. Our family has known that he is suffering with loss of language ability for quite some time. We are all heartbroken; particularly for someone as articulate and intellectually lively as my father this is a devastating diagnosis.

But I have just as strong a belief in the power of non-verbal communication as I do in the power of words. A person can express a lot with just a turning away of the head. If Mademoiselle Chambon gives its audience anything it's that we should value words as a gift and use them a lot more sparingly. We take them way too much for granted as it is.

The Literary World Cup

Just a short follow-up to my previous blog from May 24 about the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her book of short stories, "The Thing Around Your Neck." If you happen to read The New Yorker, or even if you don't, but you want to sound very literary while watching Nigeria play Argentina in the second group of the World Cup, you can mention that Adiche was just named to the prestigious list of "20 under 40" promising young fiction writers in the June 7 issue of The New Yorker.

In case your friends haven't thrown chips at you yet because they just missed Argentina score with a header at the end of the first half, you can add that the last time the New Yorker published the list was ten years ago, in 1999. That list included writers such as Junot Diaz, who went on to win the Pulitzer prize in fiction for The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Once the second half starts and your friends ask you why you are discussing literature during an extremely important sporting event, and why it can't wait until after the game and the three beers, you can eloquently point out that a young writer from Nigeria being chosen for the "20 under 40" list is the equivalent of scoring the tying goal in the second half. She may not win the whole game, but she just got herself in a damn good position to try.

Our Town

There are two things that can make Manhattan feel like a small town: the first is when there is a huge snowstorm--school is cancelled, not a car moves down the street and you look out the window and inevitably there is one guy with a knapsack cross-country skiing down Second Avenue. The other is when there is an Avenue street fair.

The avenue street fair is a Manhattan tradition which I would like to compare to a country fair, except that it is nothing at all like a country fair, except for the grilled corn. The "Avenue," which is hosting the fair, is closed to traffic for about twenty blocks; vendors of every ethnic background materialize with their white stands selling, among other things, Persian rugs, Peruvian embroidered kids' clothing, French perfume (well, it does say "Coco" on the bottle), African print skirts and South African world cup jerseys--okay, that particular vendor only shows up once every four years. And, oh, the smells: the chicken, beef and onion shish kebabs on the grill; the sizzling of the deep fried zeppole dough before it is rolled in sugar; the spicy pan fried Thai noodles with peanut sauce.

I wasn't thinking about a street fair when I looked out the kitchen window onto Third avenue this morning. Since on Father's Day this year I will be closer to "the Father" in Rome than "my father" in New Jersey, I invited my dad and assorted relatives to my apartment for an early celebration. This is the first Father's Day in fifteen years that will not be celebrated at our former home in the suburbs with a gourmet barbecue and a game of one on one soccer between my step-brother and one of the kids. Despite my worries that it wouldn't live up, the bagels and lox and chocolate babka were great, as was the company. As it turns out, there was still a barbecue, but it was only the smoke that came wafting up to my seventh floor window.

As soon as the last guest was out the door, so was I. Downstairs and onto Third Avenue for my small town, hometown, warm weather street fair. The kebabs were still smoking, the rain hadn't started yet and there was still plenty of grilled corn and fresh squeezed lemonade for the crowd that was leisurely walking down the middle of a city street.

Divine Providence

It has taken a few days to digest all of the things that happened when I went spent Friday and part of Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend at the Princeton reunion, and then Saturday night and Sunday morning at my own 25th reunion at Brown University. I predicted sentimentality, and if I had to put a theme song to the part of my own reunion that I attended, it would have to be Green Day's "Good Riddance", even if they do play it at every Bar Mitzvah and on the last day of camp. It truly reminded me that college was "the time of my life."

Probably the highlight of the whole weekend was reuniting with my best friend from Brown on the three and a half hour train ride from Princeton to Providence (reuniting being a euphemism for talking nonstop the entire way, including on the two trains we had to take to get to Amtrak at Penn Station in New York.)

There are some friends who we have not spoken to in five or ten or even twenty years, but it doesn't matter because when we see them again it's as if we've been checking in with them every day since our freshman year in college. We suddenly remember why this person meant so much to us, yet there's a surreal quality to the encounter given that they show up (in some cases) with their 6'2'' teenage son.

My own son (only 5'8", but still) just finished his freshman year at Brown. He came along, allegedly to visit his upper class friends who were graduating, but I think he just wanted to make sure that his mother didn't party like it was 1999. Just in case the reunion committee was serious about recreating an 80s style college "funk night" with the requisite kegs, smell of beer and vomit in the hallway afterwards, I had two glasses of Proseco at the hotel before I left. Luckily we have all grown up to appreciate an open bar (and to be able to pay for it).

Even though I had the usual 'shouting match over the music' five minute conversations with most of the classmates I spoke to, I still managed to have substantive talks with two different college friends, both of whom I never see. That meant a lot to me. Also, Princeton may have the "P-rade" with its loud, outlandish orange and black costumes, but there is nothing like the Brown tradition of marching down college hill with your classmates, and then lining the hill to watch the current class of graduates march. It never fails to give me chills, despite the 85 degree weather.

Walking back up the hill, past the college and on to the main drag of Thayer street, my son said that he would prefer to have just a week off for summer and then come back to school. That, even more than the reunion itself, is how I know just how much time has passed.