The persistence of memory

One of the really wonderful things I've been able to do my entire life is remember most of the things I've done wrong. This is precisely the opposite of what positive thinkers say: That the key to success is a bad memory. And it's not so much a matter of learning from mistakes as the reliving of them time and again, making it nearly impossible to do anything new unless you shut the memory off. Thus I remember bombing at a talent show in ninth grade with a stand-up act, as if that matters to anyone in the entire universe or has any bearing at all on my life now. Or throwing pebbles at a car when I was 4 and getting yelled at by the people driving. Or not having the guts to throw a friend out of an apartment when she crashed on our couch WAY too long; Or getting turned down for a date by someone I have never seen since and who was utterly wrong for me. On the other hand, I do remember a lot of good things too, a lot of which have to do with Garden City. Anyway, for this blog I want to avoid the bad stuff and write about the good stuff.

New York Trip, Part 4: It all adds up

People said we'd either love or hate "Adding Machine," and as it turned out, I liked it quite a bit, although the intensity of the experience, with its metaphorically obtuse main character, Mr. Zero, invites the kind of giddy glee one feels after a particularly serious experience passes. That's how I felt as I left the theater on Minetta Lane (yes, our cabbie did not know where Minetta Lane is in Greenwich Village) and walked with my friends up to a great restaurant next to Comix on West 14th Street. There, the "guys" -- Alec, Mike and me -- ordered spaghetti, and I ordered a bean soup. The soup was served differently from anything I'd ever seen: The waiter brought a white bowl to the table with a lid on it; he lifted the lid and revealed a pile of "soup guts." He then poured the stock over it. The spaghetti got the same treatment: Each dish was placed on the table with a lid; the waiters SIMULTANEOUSLY lifted the lids, revealing our ... spaghetti. Which was delicious. I don't think we're in Applebee's anymore, Toto. They then comped us dessert (an effort to get us out of there?).

Next: Hanging out at Shea. Again.

Pop culture brackets for the past 25 years

Yes, I voted for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" over the Salman Rushdie fatwa, but come on ... the fatwa was a very strong No. 2. Anyway, since this covers pop culture for most of the time period covered by the blog, here it is for your enjoyment:

http://www.ew.com/ew/game/0,,20205034,00.html

Garden City is Nixonland

I'm looking forward to reading "Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein, because for one thing Garden City was the capital of Nixonland, and for another thing it's really the story of our generation. My parents denied it, but I was born four days before the 1960 election, and I was named "Richard." You do the math. (In Reno, I sat across from a woman also born in 1960; she was named "Jackie.")

I have two strong memories. In the first, I recall, when I was 7, standing along Franklin Avenue waiting for Nixon to drive by in an open car. There was an advance man revving up the crowd. When he finally came by, my mother grabbed me under my arms, lifted me up (no mean feat even then) and shouted, "Here's another Richard!"

The day after the 1968 election, I walked home from Stratford to discover that Nixon finally had been declared the winner. My mother and grandmother were dancing with each other in the living room, elated at his win.

New York Trip, Part 3: Roll Tide

Observations about my day May 30 in Manhattan (so nice, they named it twice):

I discovered that the Little Church Around the Corner is undergoing extensive renovation after a condo went up next door. This is known as the Actor's church, because a church around the corner refused to hold services for a dead actor; the parson there recommended the little church around the corner, and the rest is history. It's an Anglo-Catholic parish, and coincidentally it's where my dad's parents were married. So I peered into the sanctuary, then took a photo of the church's steeple, which contrasts with the nearby Empire State Building.

I reached the church after walking across town through the wholesale flower district and by FIT. There used to be a theater down there named the Production Company; Norman Rene ran it. I read scripts for the theater because a friend of mine from Wesleyan, Andrea Corney, was working as the literary manager. There I met Craig Lucas, who went on to write some of my favorite plays of the 1990s -- "Reckless" and "Prelude to a Kiss" -- as well as the book for "Light in the Piazza." Rene directed Lucas' first productions, and he also directed the film "Longtime Companion," which starred Mary Louise Parker, a frequent Lucas actress. Anyway, like most of Manhattan, the area is a jumble of memories, old things and new things.

On this hike, I was wearing my Alabama hat. Walking up Park Avenue north of Grand Central (where I stopped to reload on electrolytes), I heard an old, gravelly voice shout, "Roll Tide!" He told me he was an alum and knew what the hat means; I told him my wife and I work there now and that I was just visiting.

Later, during my visit to New Dramatists, a playwright and a composer told us about a musical they're writing based on Shirley Jackson's bleak, Gothic story "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." If done right, it should be really cool.

Next: Crane, the village, "Adding Machine" and spaghetti.

More things from the past 30 years that don't suck

Sheryl Crow
Dar Williams
Children's television
Spy magazine
Entertainment Weekly

Wired magazine (before it got taken over)

Good Will Hunting
Wag the Dog
William H. Macy in just about anything
First season of "Six Feet Under"
The Venetian in Las Vegas
The Starbridge series by Susan Howatch
Plays by Richard Greenberg
Novels by Terry Pratchett
The visitors' center at the former Japanese interment center near Independence, Calif.
Truman and John Adams by David McCullough

New York Trip, Part 2: That's entertainment

On May 29, I arrived in New York without incident, having relied successfully on New Jersey Transit to get me from Newark to Manhattan. There are three things I vowed to do in Manhattan: Eat a slice at Ray's, get my hair cut at the Astor Place Barber Shop and eat a knish. I got the first two done Thursday afternoon, as I walked from West Chelsea over to Astor Place and then back by the bust along 14th Street. Ray's -- the one Jon Favreau obsesses over in "Elf" and "Iron Man" -- is on Sixth and 11th, and the cheese never disappoints. As for Astor Place, I had a fine conversation with a barber whom I didn't really understand (thick accent), but we talked about how I used to get my hair cut there in the 1980s, and I got the best $14 haircut in Manhattan (very short, BTW).

So with my legs rubbery but my spirits high, I returned to my friends Elissa and Alec's condo. Alec, arriving home from work, hinted that he had plans for us that evening, and after he accomplised some business, we hustled through streets and driveways up to the Upright Citizens Brigade theater on 26th Street. Alec walks a great deal faster than I do, so I found myself trailing behind. Yet we managed to take our seats in the theater just moments before the show started. Looking around, I noticted that I was the oldest person in the audience -- a not altogether bad feeling.

So I had no idea what I was going to see. That's the beauty of New York: There's a surprise on every corner. This particular surprise came in two waves: "She Tried to be Normal" and Pangea 3000. The first title was a one-woman show featuring a rising comedian and actress named Lennon Parham, who presented a series of sketches framed by a late-night DJ routine. Her timing was impeccable, and she managed to make fun of people from the South (where I live) and people over 40 (which I am). I was a particular fan of her sketch featuring a student obsessing over a NYU professor and a drunken dance teacher locked in the age of "Solid Gold." I'm really looking forward to seeing her again.

After a pause, we were treated to sketches by Pangea 3000, a group of energetic young men whose best sketches involved a doctor eating a chicken parm sandwich while a family dealt with the terminal cancer of their child; a song-and-dance routine spoofing Branson acts; and a spelling bee where the "words" were the sounds of passing gas. The front row was taken up almost entirely of young women, who seemed to be fans of the ensemble. Nothing wrong with that.

So a haircut, a slice, sketch comedy and good friends -- a great day, and all things I miss about NYC.