Divamensch

I saw Obsession earlier this week - - my friend Lydia encouraged me to see it, it's an indie horror movie that's getting a lot of attention, has broken all kinds of peculiar records. I recently came up with two personal goals when it comes to movies and this one checked both boxes: To see more movies in the theater, rather than streaming at home. To see more movies about which I know very little. A little background on the second point: a couple summers ago I saw the movie *T

There were four shows up for Best Director of a Play in 1978, they fit neatly into pairs: Diva: Dracula, Deathtrap Mensch: The Gin Game, Da Melvin Bernhardt was the winner for Da, a quiet little Irish drama about a man acknowledging the father figures in his life. Total Mensch territory. I bet there were about eight lighting cues in that show.

I just read in the NY Times about the death of Louise Lasser (age 87). I just read her Times obit and what a treasure trove of useful information! It was no surprise that she went to a private school in the Bronx and then Brandeis but I was not expecting to read that she was Barbra Streisand's understudy as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It For You Wholesale, the show that catapulted Streisand into semi-stardom. She met Woody Allen on a double date (she was with the other guy)

I've been listening to a lot of Les Paul and Mary Ford lately. Les Paul was a major innovator in two areas: he's one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar. And he was among the first to really go to town with multi-track recording. He said it was a money-saving thing at first - - he didn't want to hire backup singers for his wife Mary Ford so he had her record her own backup vocals and laid them on top of each other. Patti Page was the first artist to hit the big