every little step she takes

Last night my mom treated my cousin Seth and me to the newly-reprised Broadway musical "A Chorus Line." We had front-row seats that literally put our knees five inches from the stage. I'm hot and cold on musicals, but I'm a sucker for dance, and as soon as the dancers came on grand jete-ing and jazz-squaring to the original 70's choreography, I was enthralled.

The opening scene has a group of eager young dancers auditioning for a broadway musical and doing combinations for the producer, dancing their guts out and singing ("I hope I get it, I hope I get it! I really need this job!" )

It reminded me of old dance-class days and how wonderful it is to be able to do something beautiful with your body. Even if it's just one day that you're the dancer closest to the mirror who knows the combination best, nailing a triple pirouette, leaping across the floor and catching a glance at yourself floating, or doing a deep layout dipping the back of your head inches from the floor and knowing that your back will be strong enough to hold you there...and yes! It is, because you're young and strong and you have trained your body to make lovely shapes and be pointed in the right places and soft and fluid in others.

The storyline to "A Chorus Line" is a little dated, relying on some stereotypes that are antiqued and a love-lost plot that's less-than-original. I like the "musical about a musical" (meta-musical?) genre though, (i.e.Producers) and I love that the dancers are really playing versions of themselves--they are dancers who have had to sacrifice and scrimp and give desperate performances and come a long ways from home to arrive on this Broadway stage (five of the 17 dancers were actually on Broadway for the first time in this show).

When the the cast came out for that last curtain call, done-up Broadway-style in gold suits and leotards with rhinestone tights and top hats, singing that familiar "One! Singular Sensation! Every little step she takes..." to some invisible star, and doing that tight, stylized hat routine and high-impact kick-lines, I was, well, moved. Because it's a rare thing to see someone doing the thing they have trained for their whole life and love the most at the moment they are giving it their best.

A real, live protest

Many years ago, I attended a protest at my undergraduate university. It was the first and, I think, only protest ever to take place on campus. We protested in reaction to Rodin's "The Kiss" sculpture being yanked from an on-campus art exhibit (in retrospect, we probably could've spent that ONE protest on something more urgent). Since it was a first protest for all of us, we lacked call-and-response chants, banners, posters, and significant news coverage; it was a little rag-tag.

Today I got to experience a real full-blown campus protest. I mean, with security, camera crews, real throngs making real demands. I felt a little thrilled when I had to shove past onlookers and present my ID to be allowed on campus. I didn't get to watch all of President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech, or President Bollinger's smackdown (favorite introductory statement: "Let’s, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator") because you know, I had to get to work and I had photocopies to make for very important worksheets and hand-outs.

Which got me to thinking that's why undergrads are so awesome. Protests without undergrads would be about as likely as tornados without trailer parks. So here's to the undergrads who made most of today's statements of free speech. Fight the power (and being denied good art, and evil dictators).

The OC Reincarnate??

HAS ANYONE SEEN THIS? Britton just told me that Josh Schartz (mastermind of The O.C.) has produced a new series based on the shameless teen chic-lit "Gossip Girl" books. (Which, by the way, look deplorable every time I see them at the book store.) The new series' plot sounds like a mix of The O.C. and 90210, gone East-Coast style. That girl in the front of this cast photo is a darn-near doppelganger for Mischa Barton.

The first episode of "Gossip Girl" aired yesterday. Did anyone see it? Did it have any glimpses of the early-O.C. glory? One can hardly dare to hope...

Reason #22 I Love Living in Manhattan

Tonight I left the sleepy streets of the Upper West Side to visit Olivia in her new digs in the cool Lower East Side, where there are more hipsters per square foot than there are tourists in Times Square. After a delicious bite at TINY'S GIANT SANDWICHES, and some treats from Sugar Sweet Sunshine, we just happened to run into this street fair in Little Italy.

It was all lit up pretty, like Christmas...in Italy.

Then we spotted these delicious hot cinnamon buns....OH WAIT, they're giant coils of sausage the size of your head.

Then I dominated the carnie games, decimating the balloons and laying waste to the ball-in-a-bucket toss, and strutted around Soho with a four-foot stuffed Spongebob. Okay, I popped one balloon and won this hand puppet, and the bucket guy gave us a sympathy stuffed toy cheeseburger because he thought Olivia was cute.

The moral of the story is, even in Manhattan we have good old-fashioned suburban-style fun. It's full of delights--you never know when you'll turn a corner and find good times or an oversized sausage.

(Now will you come back, Jamie?)

Date with a Genius: Peter Singer

One cool thing about attending/working at a university is the opportunity to listen in on people who are really talented or important or think about hard issues a lot harder and often than I do. Usually I miss these things and find out about them later (The Dalai Lama was here today? You don't say...) Today I managed to get my trash together and went to hear a lecture from Peter Singer, renowned author/human and animal rights activist/utilitarian philosopher. It's a mixed bag with Singer--who is known for arguing that the way we treat animals ("speceism") will one day be regarded as deplorable as racism; and who is an advocate of euthanasia, amongst other controversial topics that make people raise their fists and roll their eyes.


Today's lecture was on Ending World Poverty. Something we can all agree on, no? We'll see. Singer's point is that most of us would consider it unethical to pass a drowning child in a shallow pond because it would ruin our favorite shoes and fancy suit, rather than rescue the kid. Nonetheless, that's exactly what we do, Singer says, when we let 27,000 children die every day in poor countries by keeping our superabundance to ourselves rather than passing up a fancy car, summer home, superfluous shoes in favor of giving money to those who suffer from extreme poverty.

Singer used some stats from Jeffrey Sachs and figures from the UN and such, and came up with $124 billion as the amount of money it would take to raise third-world countries out of extreme poverty. Then he pointed out that the U.S. spends, like, $100 million or something just on bottled water every year (when we have perfectly clean tap water!) Basically, Singer thinks we should all give a certain percentage of our money to third-world nations for relief. And if you're Microsoft's Paul Allen, for example, who has a $200 million yacht, you're especially ripe for reprimand.

Some questions to ponder after spending two hours with Peter Singer and a hundred close friends:

-Should distance play a role in our empathy; i.e, are we obligated to show the same compassion to those far away as those who are near us?

-If you had $5,000 you could give away to charity it would only be a drop in the ocean of the $124 billion needed; does this number make you more or less likely to donate? Does it make you aware of the need, or just daunted by your personal powerlessness against that figure?

-Why are we more likely to give $5,000 to someone we know for whom it can do limited good, instead of to a charitable organization in which it may save several lives? (See questions one and two, I suppose).

-Why is charity the best solution to this problem? Is it sustainable? (The old "teach a man to fish" chestnut). If we did somehow raise the $124 billion next year, would it mean that, as harsh as it sounds, those communities would be overwhelmed by the 27,000 children that now live, and affluent nations would have to come up with even more money the next year? (This is the question I really wanted to ask Singer, but they passed me over for more distinguished guests who had written books on the subject. Go figure.)

-Are all of these questions just distractions to excuse us from saving the drowning child?

-Lastly, If I saw scholar and writer-on-globalization Bruce Robbins, and recognized him, and watched him stand awkwardly in the aisle next to me for ten minutes because all the seats were full, and then watched him leave in frustration, is it ethical to not have offered my seat? Have I prevented the dialogue that would have perhaps ended world poverty? To this we shall never know the answer.

1 in 8 Million

Britton coined a little saying that I think is quite clever:

"If you are one in a million, in New York, there are eight of you."

I find this thought-provoking and a little creepy, especially when I spot someone on the street who looks familiar, or like my evil twin, or is just extraordinarily weird.

I got a jury summons and went to the Court House yesterday, and when the guy behind the desk looked me up in the system, he informed me that I am the only person with my name in all of Manhattan (as far as prospective juror records go, which believe me, in New York are quite thorough). Granted, that's only Manhattan, not all five boroughs. But nonetheless, I felt pretty cool to have beaten the NYC clone odds.

Love Bridge

As everyone knows (or at least everyone who's been to Puerto Vallarta) this little seaside enclave became famous when Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor shot a film here (Night of the Iguana) and then built homes here. I guess Burton built his first, because he built his cabana and then had this pink "puente de amor" built over the street to Elizabeth Taylor's pad.

Brit and I read about this in our trusty guide book, and headed over for a tour. No one answered when I rang the bell to "Casa Kimberly" (Taylor's home) so I just kept buzzing and buzzing because 1) we are intrepid travelers, and 2) it started raining really, really hard and there was nowhere else in sight to go.

Finally this guy comes down and answers the door and takes us inside, and it is only after we've been in there for several minutes charming him with our Span/Portuguese/lish that we figure out that this guy lives here by himself, in fact, he sleeps on a cot on the floor with his dog in what used to be Elizabeth Taylor's closet (we later witnessed said cot and dog--actually, I think Brit just smelled the dog). Anyway, the guy was nice enough to show us the entire place, including Burton's house, and offered to let us swim in the swimming pool! He even took the above photo of us on the pink love bridge. It turns out there was no official tour, he was just a nice/bored guy who felt bad for us and let us in his house. He didn't even accept money in return for our visit.

A few things to ponder after being an uninvited guest at Casa Kimberly:

1) Why not make each of your (four) bathrooms top-t0-bottom pink?

2) Ocean view patio (Taylor) or patio with a pool (Burton)?

3) Is it dysfunctional to live in a separate house from your spouse connected by an aerial passageway...or brilliant?

4) Taylor named each of the rooms in her house after her films, why not name the rooms in your house after projects to remind yourself of your accomplishments and milestones? Britton's could be something like, "Hostile Takeover from Another Private Equity Firm" or, "Night of the White Paper." Mine might be, "Who's Afraid of Another Student Loan?"

5) One day you're the hottest couple in Hollywood living out a torrid love affair on a tropical beach, the next you've been divorced seven times, there's a dude with his dog living in your closet, and your best friend is Michael Jackson.

This last message of lost love weighed heaviest on the minds of we two honeymooners...nonetheless we took Diego, his pink bridge, and his generosity as a good omen for our future.