CT Blue

My wife and I, along with my sister and one of her friends, went to see Jersey Boys at the Bushnell in Hartford.

Unsurprisingly, the youngest people in the theater by far were the folks on the stage. For those who don’t know, Jersey Boys is a musical based on the career of the Four Seasons. For people of a certain age, the play is a sure fire draw, since the music is both familiar and great.

Our memories get distorted as they recede farther in the rear view mirror. I think of the Four Seasons as being primarily a pre-Beatles phenomenon, though I do remember clearly that what I consider their best song, December, 1963, came along quite a bit later. In reality, in one form or another, they endured into the early 70s, and put out quality music throughout that period. The members of the group never acquired distinct public identities as far as I know. Everyone could name the Beatles, and lots of folks could identify each Stone, Byrd, etc., but I doubt that many could name each Season, and if their travails were documented in the pages of Rolling Stone, I was never aware of it.

Turns out their relations were, if anything, stormier than those of that more famous British quartet. Getting mixed up with the mob will have that effect, I guess. The show is leaving soon, so this review is rather late, but I give it two thumbs up, which is all the thumbs I have.

Here’s the real thing, by the way, with a medley on the old Hulabaloo. Videos of the original Four Seasons are hard to find; Valli has apparently been backed by a succession of Seasons since the originals broke off.

This is Super Bowl Sunday. Super Bowls are counted in Roman Numerals, and so are Hygienic Art Shows. For those of you not from the New London area, the Hygienic Art Show is a yearly event held in what was once a restaurant, and is now an art gallery. The rules are simple: One Piece Per Artist, No Judge, No Jury, No Fees, No Censorship. This year the show has spilled over into what was once a furniture store on Golden Street. We avoided yesterday’s mob scene opening and went today.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hygienic, here’s a smattering of the offerings. The welcoming side outside. We brought the face with us:

The Cafe below is a downtown New London fixture. The two characters in front aren’t quite New London fixtures, but they would fit right in.

A few pictures featuring our four legged friends:

The Golden Street exhibition hall:

And, finally, an Obama loving giraffe:

The exhibition runs through the 14th, and is on 79 Bank Street in New London, a stone’s throw from our Drinking Liberally meeting place, the Bulkeley House. There’s a great ice cream place across the street, for those inclined (like me) to more juvenile gastronomic treats. Unfortunately, the web site doesn’t give the hours for the exhibition, so it’s not at all clear that one could combine a visit to the Exhibition with a stop at our next Drinking Liberally, which will be this Thursday.

My wife and I subscribe to the American Prospect, in which today I found an article by Sharon Butler, a professor of visual arts at Eastern Connecticut State University. The University is a bit north of here, but safely ensconced in our largely ignored Eastern part of the state. I enjoyed the article (subscription required to read the whole article), about the prospects for art in the age of Obama. I particularly enjoyed her take on the current exhibition at the Guggenheim, about which I expressed my own thoughts a few weeks ago. I said:

The other main attraction consisted of a collaboration of artists that, according to the museum’s website:

Working independently and in various collaborative constellations, they eschewed the discrete aesthetic object in favor of the exhibition environment as a dynamic arena, ever expanding in its physical and temporal parameters.

I have no reason to believe they did not succeed in their artistic endeavors, as I have no idea what the above means. Mostly the fruit of their efforts consisted of slogans written on the wall, or hanging from the ceiling, many of which made no sense whatsoever.

Ms. Butler says the exhibit in question was a perfect exemplar of art in the age of Bush:

Nowhere in the art world has this collective despondency and resignation been more starkly revealed than in a recent Guggenheim Museum exhibition lethargically titled “theanyspacewhatever.” Ten relational artists — that is, those focusing on how people and communities interact — who made it big over the past decade were commissioned to collaborate with curator Nancy Spector on installations that would occupy the museum’s five spirally arranged floors. Much of the show featured empty space, and Douglas Gordon’s faux-sage existential notions stenciled across the walls (“You’re closer than you know,” “Nothing will ever be the same”) seemed calculated to convey the profundity of banality and vice-versa — a Bushian notion if ever there were one. Perhaps the conceptual high point of the exhibition was Jorge Pardo’s maze of cardboard-screen partitions unevenly perforated with vaguely alien shapes, which made viewers yearn for it all to be over.

She’s right about the cardboard, but it beat the empty space by a mile:

I plead not guilty by reason of lack of notice to taking unauthorized pictures. We took the elevator up and worked our way down. The sign barring cameras was, so far as we noticed, only on the first floor as you enter the spiral. We only saw it as we exited.

But I digress (do I do anything else?). The main reason for writing this post is to let my readers know that Ms. Butler has a blog, and since she is from our neck of the woods, and since she appears to be a good leftie, i thought I would point you to it. It’s called Two Coats of Paint, and you can reach it at the link, or from the blogroll at the right. It’s about art, mostly, though she does hit on politics. Here’s her take on Bush’s official portrait.

I seem to have a mental block when it comes to our hallowed Noank Memorial Day Parade. Last year I filmed the entire parade, only to find after it was all over that I had neglected to actually push the little button to start filming. So, last year, no clips at all.

This year I arrived with the same camera, loaded with a High Speed 4gb SCHC card, determined to not make that mistake again. And I didn’t.

Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, approximately 3.5 gb of the memory card (which showed up as empty so far as the camera was concerned) was taken up by old files that I had neglected to erase. Long and boring story behind that, which I won’t belabor.

So, much to my regret I have to impart the bad news that I am unable to show the entire Noank Parade in all its splendor. The good news is that even though I was able to film only about 3 minutes of the parade, I still got a good 80% of it, and 90% of the good stuff. Unless you’re a fire truck fan, you’re getting pretty much the whole thing. So, without further ado: The Noank Memorial Day Parade, 2008:

I went a whole day yesterday without turning on my computer. My family and I, along with my sisters and their kids, went to New York to see a play and drop a ton of money on a couple of restaurants. Unfortunately, my brother in law was not with us, so I have no one to cajole into writing a review of the play, which he most likely would have panned anyway, had he seen it.

We went to Is He Dead?, a farce written by Mark Twain in 1898. It was an extremely silly play, the premise of which is that Jean-François Millet (a then deceased French artist) had faked his own death increase the value of his paintings. In order to collect the cash, he posed as his own sister, appropriately cross-dressed. Needless to say, at the time the French were not amused. The play was never performed during Twain’s lifetime, though the original plan was for simultaneous openings in New York and London.

The Times, to whose review I have linked above, gave the play a generally favorable review. I’m easily satisfied. It has some good laughs, and I think most people left the play smiling. The actors played it just right, right down to the Snidely Whiplash-like bad guy, complete with all black suit, black hat and sinister mustache.

As a public service and purely out of a disinterested concern for my readers, I write to suggest a gift that is sure to please everyone on your holiday list. Everyone on our list is getting one, I can assure you.

Everyone you know would surely love a copy of the Intellectual Devotional, American History, available at your favorite bookstore today. I would suggest that you purchase the book by the case.

This endorsement is strictly on the merits and has nothing to do with the fact that my son was a Contributing Writer to the book, which is sure to be a classic. Nor does the fact that he may or may not (he tells us nothing) have a financial stake in the book have any bearing on my enthusiastic and unqualified endorsement of this major publishing event. All of these things are the farthest thing from my mind, which is proven by the fact that I just said they were. It’s a little like George Bush saying he doesn’t torture-it must be true or he wouldn’t say it.

So I urge my readers to do the right thing be those to whom they gift. Give them this book. Give them multiple copies. And for God’s sake, don’t be cheap about it. Pay full price.