Good morning on this lovely Memorial Day Weekend Sunday. I was up until 2:30 a.m. last night watching "The Chicago Ten" with Bob Fass at Theater for the New City. All right, director Brett Morgan, congratulations. Obviously you can't take your eyes off it. At last I have some idea of what went on then. I recall the days of protests and riots. My friends had older brothers always running off to Washington. That 1968 Democratic convention was a non-communicative mess, especially horrifying considering the revolutionary origins of this country... and what happend in 1968? Humphrey won to lose against Nixon.

TNC's Lower East Side Festival for the Arts runs through Memorial Day in New York City, and it's full of great surprises, this one beginning at 12:30 AM, following the beautiful "Lower Eastside Stories." Much earlier in the evening I saw parts of a film that explained the origins of square dancing, that the swing your partner director was reciting battlefield encounters with Ulysses S. Grant. I see now that this was a mockumentary called "The Bentfootes."

Earlier in the evening I was on the West Side hearing Woon-Sung Choi articulate "Pictures at an Exhibition" on the Merkin Concert Hall Steinway. She also played another Carnival piece, this one of Vienna, by Schuman, (Fauschingsschwank aus Wien). The music in the movie and piano concert were similarly dynamic in range, although the film's score had a very loud playback. The sound design in the film, well, everything about it is a documockumentary accomplishment.

In other entertainment news, Chris Force and Maria Micheles shared a reading night at the Brecht Forum, the way Elizabeth Versalie and I shared one the month before. Chris's play is called "Adam Delved;" Maria's is "Round and Round the Night Park."

I saw an impressive staged reading of Les Hunter's full length play, "To the Orchard."

Cry Baby the Musical turns out to be great. I loved the song collection on the movie soundtrack, which took me until the end of the night to remember. It's a sub-genre of the 50's nostalgia show, the misunderstood Juvenile Delinquent. The lyrics and score, orchestrations, arrangements, directing and sets are great, as are the cast, crew and orchestra performing them. The script reminds me not to confuse John Waters with Tim Burton, although the camp film genre is a treated seriously and sincerely by both.

Quick note on meta data, a CLE lecture taught us that meta data is the record of every word I originally typed and evey change I made in this entry.

Lawyers, there are programs you can feel obligated to buy that can strip clean your meta data. I say, Be Proud of Your Meta Data!