"It's a Bird... It's a Plane..."

 

Laurie and I attended a performance of "It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman" last night. The play, given a five-day Encore run at the New York City Center, was well done and quite entertaining. The cast members, some of whom Laurie has seen in other plays, were not big-name stars, but they were more than worthy of  the cheers and applause they got at the final curtain.

To be sure, this play is not deep drama and the characters are mostly two-dimensional. The Man of Steel is the Super Boy Scout we knew and loved in the 60s; Lois Lane is the plucky yet love-smitten gal reporter. The bad guys are, well, bad guys. (One lyric has them singing, "We're gonna bring back villainy!") Of course Superman triumphs in the end and the audience leaves in a happy mood.

The staging is excellent; the orchestra, which is superb, actually gets more of the stage than the actors. The action goes quite well with a bit of background and minimal props. And there is a bit of fun for longtime comics fans: The "statue" that is erected at the Metropolis Institute of Technology is a piece of art -- from the cover of Superman #16.

Unlike "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," which has characters swooping around the theater on wires, Superman's flying is done by a cardboard rendition of the character rolling across the stage. In fact, the acrobatics by the members of the Flying Lings are perhaps more impressive than anything in "Spider-Man" because they do it all without any wires.

One disappointing note: The art used on the ads -- as well as t-shirts, mugs and fridge magnets -- has a distinctive Kurt Schaffenberger-esque look to it, but there is no art credit given anywhere. (In fact, the copyright is a rather puzzling "1938 Nat. Pub.") And that means there are probably no royalties being sent.

In his rave review in The New York Times, Ben Brantley calls it "an affable throwback to the old-style song-and-dance show that asked only to entertain you." Indeed, it was two very entertaining hours and well worth seeing if you can get there.

Letter to Grandpa

Dear Grandpa,

Thank you for babysitting me yesterday. I know I didn't do too much sleeping while you were here, but, given a choice of nap time or bonding-with-Grandpa time, it's a no-brainer.

You did a good job understanding me when I was telling you I was hungry, but you need to be a little faster refilling the bottle if I finish and am still hungry. Sorry if I seemed a little peeved about that, but a man's got to eat, you know.

You were also very good at understanding me when I told you my diaper needed changing. I really hate sitting in a wet one.

Mommy and Daddy are bringing me to your house on Sunday afternoon. I hope you have a rocking chair like we do because I really like when we sit together and rock back and forth. And you can tell me more stories about when Daddy and Aunt Sammi were as little as me.

Love,
Alex

Zzzzz

An article in The Daily Beast today cites research that people who sleep less than six hours a night are more likely to gain weight than those who sleep longer.

Is that really much of a surprise? People who are awake eighteen hours a day have more time to eat than those who are awake for fifteen. And it's a fairly safe assumption that those extra three hours of waking time are being spent reading, watching TV or sitting at a computer rather than engaging in any rigorous exercise, so they aren't burning off many calories.

But someone or some organization provided a grant so this study could be made. Just as a grant was provided for research to determine that people who sleep five hours a night tend to be more tired than people who sleep eight.

I'm speculating that people who are awake are more likely to be reading my blog than people who are asleep. Do you think I can get a grant to research it?

Photo Op

Grandpa and Alex discuss important worldly matters

The Elmont Junior Detectives

  One of the first series of books that I followed in my youth was the Hardy Boys. Starting in fourth grade, I read every one that I could find -- at the time there were only about forty of them -- buying some and trading for others with a couple of my friends who were also enthusiasts.
   Frank and Joe Hardy were the sons of detective Fenton Hardy and, in every book, they got involved in some kind of mystery, be it searching for a lost treasure, foiling the schemes of robbers and smugglers, or tracking down kidnappers.
   I was reading the books in the early 1960s, just as the Stratemeyer Syndicate which produced them was beginning their revisions of the novels, updating them from their original 1920s-30s versions. I got to read the original stories, rather than the ones that were "revised to update the references and remove racial stereotypes." (I was never quite sure what a "roadster" was, but Frank and Joe drove one and I looked forward to the day when I could drive one too.)
  At the same time, I was enjoying the science fiction adventures of Tom Swift, Jr., also produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Like the Hardy Boys, Tom and his friends had exciting adventures, albeit with more fantastic elements, including incredible machines, amazing scientific discoveries and visitors from Planet X.

  Budding writer that I was in those days, it should not come as a surprise that I would invent my own version of these series: The Elmont Junior Detectives. The team, based on my friends, included Ricky Margaroli and Joe Milack ("the M&M Boys"), Booboo Bouchard, Nicky Tortorelli and Woodsy, with yours truly as the leader. In addition to the text, handwritten in a marble notebook, there were spot illustrations, just like the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift books. Given my limited artistic skills, however, most of the drawings were of things rather than people.
   In one adventure, the EJD battled "Destructo, the Deadly Robot." Said robot was wreaking havoc all around the town and attracted the attention of the EJD when it threw an entire department store into the air. This particular event was one of the illustrations: I clipped a picture of the store, Great Eastern Mills, which was a mainstay of Elmont at the time, from the newspaper and glued it onto my drawing of a sky and clouds. It was captioned "Great Eastern flies by." As with the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, no one was ever seriously injured or killed in these stories; I never addressed what happened when the flying building hit the ground.
   In another story, the EJD built the "Atomobile,"an atomic-powered flying car, and flew it into outer space. This was a particularly remarkable achievement for a bunch of elementary school students given a) the U.S. space program was still in its infancy, with John Glenn only recently having orbited the Earth and b) funding consisted of allowances and money earned mowing lawns and shoveling snow. Despite these limitations, the EJD was able to fight off an alien invasion, without adult supervision or intervention.
  
   Alas, the EJD did not enjoy a long career a la the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. They also did not have a legion of fans, except, of course, in the imagination of the person who invented them.