February 22, 2014

AAA sent, as Yeats said, a large Falstaffian man to start my truck, and eventually sell me a new battery. We talked about the pretensions of his clients, how one woman was sure he wouldn’t know how to care for all wheel drive, how a man put his hand on the precious hood and said, “You do know ths is a BMW?”

Evening on the town with members of the department, first Pack’s tavern, then Cabaret at ACT. The set was perfect, and some moments for the chorus were quite good, but the whole was sunk by a grotesque (and not in the right way) Emcee. He was the poster boy for Doing Too Much. It was exactly what one would expect from a self-respecting community theater, but what will amaze is the accolades laved upon it, as though it were somehow miraculous. It’s all in the sell, and what is being sold is an idea of theater, and not theater itself– an event the conception of which is unrelated to its actual qualities. Wish I could learn how that’s done.