MY Life in the Theater: ROAD, Jim Cartwright

We saw this at the ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATER in Manchester, England in 1994ish. It dealt with the plight of the working poor under the Thatcher regime a decade earlier. Jim Cartwright directed it himself. I think it has a pretty successful  history of performance since the mid-eighties.

Summer Reading

Does your summer reading differ at all from the rest of the year? What books do you plan to read in the weeks ahead? Mine include: DEADWOOD, Pete Dexter; KILLSHOT, Elmore Leonard, THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS, Clair Messaud, THE IMPOSSIBLES, Meg Wolitzer, SERENA, Ron Rash, and the Jordan Marsh book by Bill Pronzini (Can't remember the exact title).Probably others will intervene but these sit on the likely pile.

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING

Do People Only Like Their Sports' Movies Sympathetic?

I noted that 42 despite tepid reviews did okay at the box office. MONEYBALL, an excellent but cynical look at baseball last year or the year before, did not do all that well despite the star power of Brad Pitt.

Are we especially nostalgic about sports movies and only embrace ones that show the sport the way we would hope it to be rather than how it is? My favorites take a more jaundiced look at sports. HOOP DREAMS, for instance.

Baseball movies seem the most nostalgic. What are your favorites? Which ones offer a full picture?

Tuesday Night Music: Wilco, Nick Lowe and Mavis Staples: THE WEIGHT

Theme Song: Bewitched

Say Something Good About Detroit: FAYGO

If there is any commercial that reminds me of Detroit when my kids were growing up in the seventies and eighties, it is this one. The boat is the one that used to go from downtown Detroit to Boblo, a charming amusement park on the Detroit River between Canada and the U.S. The boat ride was half of the fun. It was a memory anyone from Detroit before the eighties shares.

Faygo is Detroit's own soda or pop as it is called here.

Now Boblo is an island full of very expensive houses. It could be worse, I guess.