JUNE??????? REALLY??????ACK!!!!!!!!!!
HAPPY ALMOST LONGEST
DAY OF SUMMER!
How in the world did June happen?
Where’s May?
Oh, yes…it’s still somewhere in a pocket in my suitcase, between the fried hair dryer (I forgot you are not supposed to stick an American hair dryer into an Italian plug…it screams WHEEEEEEEE , turns bright red, and dies a hideous death) and the postcards from Switzerland that I meant to mail four weeks ago.
It’s been a wild few weeks since last we confabbed. And wonderful! And wearying!
(That’s me up until about two days ago.)
Where to start?
San Francisco…where it all began so LONNNNNG ago…my return to the elegant old Sir Francis Drake Hotel with my all Jacques Brel concert, CHANSON.
We all had a fabulous time…my brilliant music director/pianist Michele Brourman and my tall and totally talented bass player, Larry Tuttle and Moi.
It was wondrously spooky to be singing all those Brel songs for the first time in forty, count them, forty years back in the city where I first learned them, got my Equity card, fell in love forever. Whew! Talk about a crock pot of memories!Or should I say fondue?
Then to New York Sooty for a workshop on the musical that will not die…DANGEROUS BEAUTY. This time we had the glorious addition to our music team of AnnMarie Milazzo as vocal arranger-conductor- goddess…
(Ann Marie)
(Music team…AnnMarie, Michele B, Me, Chris Jahnke and martinis!)
and the astounding Benoit Swam-Pouffre as choreographer. (He was trapped in the first wave of volcano madness, stuck in Berlin when the cloud flew over. He came to us three days late after traveling from Berlin to Rome BETWEEN CARS on a train…then a plane to Morocco…then a plane from Morocco to JFK. He wins the badge for determination. I would have just said “Shoot me” and laid down on the tarmac.)
We worked with some of the most awesome singers and dancers it has ever been my priveledge to experience…
(that’s our star, the divine Jenny Powers)
Chris & Jane Pole
(our villain… the outrageously talented and truly nice Chris Jackson with the best and strictest stage manageress in the business … Jane Pole)
Our hero, Aaron Lazar, was busy tending to Catherine Zeta Jones on Broadway, and a 6 month old baby off, so I never got his photo. And he is so worth looking at!
…under the genius eye of our own Tony-nominated director, Sheryl Kaller.
At the end of two weeks we wound up with a fantastic presentation that pretty much blew the roof off the building. And what a building! We were in the best rehearsal space in all of NYC, right across from the Lion King on 42nd Street ( and right across the street from the attempted bombing, which happened 3 hours after we got out of there. Double whew!) I kept running into people like Alan Rickman (be still my heart) and the Bergmans in the elevator. Ah, NYC. One must always remember to wear eye make up and brush ones teeth in New York. You never know who you’ll be in an elevator with.
It was INTENSE, EXCITING, EXHAUSTING! NEVER ENDING!
My dear composer pal David Friendman was at one of the presentations, and he offered me this quote, which I treasure: ”I don’t know if Adolf Hitler is still alive, but if he is, I hope he’s out of town with a musical.” Larry Gelbart.
AND…cherry on the NYC Sundae…I got to go to the Carlysle with Tovah Feldshuh for Elaine Stritch’s opening. Oh my f^&*)*&^%$# God! Here’s what I scribbled on my napkin.
“The exciting moment … going with Tovah F to see the opening night of Elaine Stritch at the Carlysle doing an evening of all Sondheim. To sit 15 feet from one of my heroines , singing the music of one of my great musical heroes, and watch her every breath … the excitement and fear in her eyes that I know so well on a first night…her PERFECT story telling. ROSE’S Turn as a second number was pretty damn daring! She RECITED “EVERY DAY A LITTLE DEATH” as the beautiful poem it is. And she closed, of course, with LADIES WHO LUNCH. A true “I was there!” moment.
Then I came home for two days…to pet the dogs, wash the unmentionables, and REPACK for…
SWITZERLAND….LAKE COMO…TUSCANY…FLORENCE!!!!!!!!
Small world moment … one of my wonderful singing students from last year in Tuscany, Giselle Wolf, and her husband Stuart Ungar, invited us to join them at their apartment in Switzerland on our way back to Tuscany for my second year of teaching master classes at Il Chiostro. We asked them where their apartment was. They told us,”Oh, you won’t know it. It’s a tiny town high in the Swiss Alps called Haute Nendaz.” Well, we had only lived there 40 years before, teaching theatre in the boy scout camp that called itself THE UNIVERSITY OF THE NEW WORLD ( it WAS the 70′s!) that is now their garage!
So we snuck under the volcanic cloud to Switzerland…
- alps
(the view from their living room window)
G and Me (Giselle and me wandering through a neighboring village, Heidi, where ARE you?)
Spent three days there, drove over the Simplon Pass from the Swiss Alps to the Italian ( Unbelievably beautiful and hugely intimidating) to Lake Como, where we stayed for three more days (me looking in every trattoria and gelataria for George Clooney, of course).
and then on to a wonderful, miraculous week of eating and drinking and singing and singing and singing at San Fedele…
me at Volpaia
and THEN…the chocolate on the Canoli…FLORENCE!!! Where we stayed in a 15th Century Medici Palazzo in the heart of the city called Palazzo Torno Buoni, now restored and operated by the Four Seasons, thank you very much. The MOST elegant building I have ever set a foot into…chandeliers in the bathrooms, for heaven’s sake! It is so top of the line Italian decorated elegant you want to have mad sex with the kitchen implements. Oh, the TOASTER!
We performed a concert in the room where the very first opera was performed in 1504 for the Pope. Astounding!
And then we headed for the airport and home, and sneaked under the cloud YET AGAIN.
As I was walking through Italian security, which is MUCH more Italian than ours, I remembered this e-mail I received…
*Here’s a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners at the airports.*
*Have a booth that you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on you.
It would be a win-win for everyone, and there would be none of this crap about racial profiling and this method would eliminate a long and expensive trial. Justice would be quick and swift. Case closed!
This is so simple that it’s brilliant. I can see it now: you’re in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion.*
*Shortly thereafter an announcement comes over the PA system, “Attention standby passengers we now have a seat available on flight number…”
Works for me!*
And home we finally came…back to the garden…
… to a diet of water and cucumbers…a new exercise routine…
EXERCISE FOR PEOPLE OVER 50
(who have just returned from Italy):
Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side. With a 5-lb potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax.
Each day you’ll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb potato bags.
Okay, then try 50-lb potato bags and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I’m at this level.)
After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each bag.
Words To Eat By
“He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart.”–C.S. Lewis.
And here is my summer time handy hint for all of you out door-sy types!
TICKS!
Spring is here and the ticks will soon be showing in heads. Here is a good way to get them off you, your children, or your pets Give it a try. Please forward to anyone with children… or hunters or dogs, or anyone who even steps outside in summer!! A School Nurse has written the info below — good enough to share — And it really works!!I had a pediatrician tell me what she believes is the best way to remove a tick. This is great, because it works in those places where it’s some times difficult to get to with tweezers: between toes, in the middle of a head full of dark hair, etc. Apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball. Cover the tick with the soap-soaked cotton ball and swab it for a few seconds (15-20), the tick will come out on its own and be stuck to the cotton ball when you lift it away. This technique has worked every time I’ve used it (and that was frequently), and it’s much less traumatic for the patient and easier for me. Unless someone is allergic to soap, I can’t see that this would be damaging in any way. I even had my doctor’s wife call me for advice because she had one stuck to her back and she couldn’t reach it with tweezers. She used this method and immediately called me back to say, “It worked!”
Few things in life I hate…ticks is one of them. N0-see-ems another. Bloodsuckers in general…and that includes Citibank! Don’t get me started!
On a different note…
I had a letter waiting for me when I returned from a dear pal from high school, who is an Marine ex-chopper pilot and a wonderful writer and a real humanist named Fleet Lentz. He has just returned from filming a documentary in Afganistan. He was filled with wonder at the country and its people and our people there and said to me when he asked many of our young military personnel why they were there on their third and fourth rotations they unanimously told him so their families would have health coverage. Food for thought.
So, as I come down from the wondrous high of the past many days, and try NOT to AVOID looking at the MSNBC news and the morning paper in despair at what is going on in this struggling world, I strive to find hope where I can. In a conversation with my favorite 86 year old philosopher pal Dorothy, who has seen so much, and said to me…” 2012…It’s not about destruction….or the end of the world… It’s about change. It’s always about change. And how we face it and flow with it and create what is better within it. And GROW UP!” I say bless you ,Dorothy, for being a hoper. Hope in difficult times is imperative.
I found this song in my notebook the other day, which I wrote with my pal Joel Silberman. I thought it appropriate for the moment. I share it with you now.
I MISS MONICA. I MISS BILL.
I MISS THE TIME BEFORE
THE SLIME OF GREED
DEVOURED CAPITOL HILL…
BEFORE THE BANKERS AND THEIR CRONIES
CAUSED US SUCH DISTRESS…
WHEN THE BIGGEST STAIN
ON OUR COUNTRY’S NAME
INVOLVED A SMALL BLUE DRESS …
I MISS HONESTY. I MISS TRUST…
THE GRACEFUL GUISE OF COMPROMISE
THE INNOCENCE OF LUST.
HOW I LONG FOR THAT SIMPLE SONG
SHE PLAYED ON A WARM HARMONICA,
BACK WHEN WE WERE THE GOOD GUYS…
BACK IN THE DAYS OF MONICA.
THEY SAY THERE’S A BLESSING FOR EVERY CURSE,
THAT TROUBLE MAKES ONE WISE ,
SO I SEARCH FOR A ROPE…A LIFERAFT OF HOPE…
AS THE ICE CAPS MELT AND THE DEFICITS RISE.
FAREWELL MOYERS . HELLO HANNITY.
TODAY THE FOURTH ESTATE IS SECOND RATE
DROWNING IN TABLOID INANITY.
IT SEEMS THAT RUSH AND GLEN AND SARAH
ARE THE STARS THEY FAWN UPON-ICA
GIVE ME A DAY OF JFK OR EVEN THAT REAGAN…RON-ICA.
I KNOW IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST JUST BEFORE THE DAWN-ICA
AND SO I SEND THIS HEARTFELT PLEA
TO THE MUCH MALIGNED MS. MONICA…
MONICA, I MISS YOU. COME HOME!
Happy Summer! Here’s to happiness, good health, creativity, and healing for the Gulf!!!
Love
Amanda
