Tuesday, June 12, 2007

You can't get away from those Sopranos. "It was sometimes hard to bear the encomiums" (Alessandra Stanley). Skimming the post-last-episode newspaper writings from AM New York and the New York Times, I was moved. Did you know that the black-out scene was a "hit" from the victim's point of view? And as any death should be, it is followed by credits. Can we get some credits rolling?

I credit Tony Hightower for getting my apartment hooked with a cable maybe six months before September 11th, 2001 because when the TV antenna went down with that tragic landfill complex from the 70's... we still had reception (which supplemented our view from the roof), which became an essential part of my life almost up to the present day.

Yes, I watched television as a child... the re-broadcasts of the Flintstones and Lost in Space and those late night screenings of Peter Medak's "Negatives"... and then I watched regularly, from September 2001 until December 2006, favoring (while attempting to follow the news progression from Afganastan to Iraq) first South Park, then Curb Your Enthusiasm, then The Daily Show, then The Colbert Report, and finally, ultimately, Sponge Bob, which leads back to an appreciation of our own nightmares... ever savoring my digital access to The UN Channel by manually entering the number "78" into the cable box.

Media content is still provided to my apartment at a hunderd a month including internet access which I don't even use because I just get it from the air...

THEY SHOULD BE PAYING YOU!

Anyway, so at only a hunderd a month I mustv disconnected premium which means I'm missing out on "movies," and hit series like The Sopranos, so my channel serfing led me to watching a Mandarin ballet montage from 8 minutes of Kill Bill...The Tony's were also on... (I love Kenny Nowell's adaptation of Wedekind's Spring Awakening)...

As for not getting away from the Sopranos, last night one of its castmembers, Dominick Chianese, contributed his acting (and singing!) skills to a benefit stage reading of "Nightingale" part of a one act festival that included a clear rendition of my own "Associative Behavior," complete with song, "Somewhere Under the Radar."

And watching Larry Pine in horn rimmed glasses during Mark Mitchell's sci-fi piece that closed out the night, I couldn't help but remember how fond I was of his performance in John Turturro's staging of "A Spanish Play."

With kindest personal regards! pd