A Child Of Atom

Who exactly is Mattel making Barbies for these days? Meet the Barbara Streisand Barbie, and Palm Beach Ken.

Ahem.

At least he isn't wearing a cockring on a thong around his neck like the last "Gay Ken" that they made...
In case you are wondering, yes there is a Palm Beach Barbie as well... not that she is any less gay than the Ken version.

The small business blog at the NYTimes has published the first part of 100 item list of things that Restaurant Servers should never do. Having been on both sides of the apron I have to say that I agree with just about everything on this list so far. In fact some of them are pet peeves of mine when it comes to eating out. Especially:

7. Do not announce your name. No jokes, no flirting, no cuteness.

18. Know before approaching a table who has ordered what. Do not ask, “Who’s having the shrimp?”

32. Never touch a customer. No excuses. Do not do it. Do not brush them, move them, wipe them or dust them.

What is interesting is that in reading this list a good half of them are things that wait staff at places like Applebee's do ON PURPOSE.

The aforementioned #7 and #32 which they do because they think it increases their tips. #18 which they do because the waiter is almost never the one who delivers your food, and they haven't been trained how to write down an order so that the food runner can consult a check and know who ordered what without asking.

"3. Never refuse to seat three guests because a fourth has not yet arrived." Which they do to control their turnover time on tables.

"17. Do not take an empty plate from one guest while others are still eating the same course." Which they do to cut down on bus time later.

"10. Do not inject your personal favorites when explaining the specials. " and "43. Never mention what your favorite dessert is." Which they do because they are trained to upsell us.

But because all of this sort of thing is routinely done at these mid-range places we are now taught to expect this sort of stuff.

Bleh.

I'll be curious to see what the next 50 items are.

PS. Of course we then come to comment #1 after the article, which yet again proves that Yankees don't understand manners, which I've discussed before.

I didn't have the pleasure of seeing Ragtime the first time that it was on Broadway 10 years ago. I've read the reviews though, essentially everyone agrees that it was a great show, had enormous potential, but that the production was a bit lacking, and would be too big for very many theaters off Broadway to ever produce. It is sort of a white whale of a show requiring a cast of around 40, a car, several widely varied locations, a ton of period costuming... it really is a difficult show to put on with any sort of a small budget. Thankfully the Kennedy Center produced a new large scale production that was so well received that it was brought to Broadway again, a bare decade since it originally closed, which is pretty unusual. But I agree, this show is well worth it, and more than ready to come back.

The show itself is an odd animal, and sort of weirdly presentational. No one outside of the historic characters (like Booker T Washington and Harry Houdini) has a name, and instead refer to each other as "Mother" or "Father." The most off putting being "Younger Brother." It is just an awkward mouthful, especially when the character refers to himself in third person that way. Once you get past this quirk though the show is packed with drama and story. Three families interweave through a single year in their lives, 1906, and any one of the families' stories would be more than enough to pack most shows, but the deft weaving of these threes stories is where the real power of this show lies.

There are some powerful performances here. Christiane Noll as "Mother" is by far the strongest performance in the show. Her character arc cuts to the heart of everything that was happening in this era, changing attitudes on race, and on the woman's place in society, the changing role of the mother, the new attitudes about child rearing and family... it is a lot to carry, and she does it perfectly. Every line, even the third person expository toss offs, are wrung fully dry of their meaning, and it is at turns hilarious and heart breaking.

The other outstanding performance is Quentin Earl Darrington as Coalhouse Walker. Here is another role burdened by layer after layer of story, a ragtime piano player with an illegitimate child who is struggling to be the perfect example of his race as Booker T Washington has taught him, but at the same time being crushed under institutional racism. Coalhouse has some power-packed songs that will leave you breathless, and handles two of the shows biggest props, the car and the piano, with grace.

The set is a wonder, a three story cast-iron style catwalk that with ease becomes a ship, a factory, a home, a theatre, a library... a dozen things. The set is minimal in some ways but full of Victorian styling if you know where to look. It echos the cast-iron buildings of Soho and middle Manhattan, as well as place like the Crystal Pavilion and the the original Penn Station that were so important to the aesthetics of this era. The larger props follow this idea, being little more than frameworks that suggest the prop, but keep them in the light and airy style of the set. (You can sort of make out the piano in the background of this shot.) It is an incredibly versatile way of creating the set that supports the show, but leaves most of the visual cueing to the costumes, which are also beautiful, and easily capable of supporting the show. The color coding at the top of the show (the white cast in creams and tans, the black cast in rusts and yellows, the immigrants in grays and blacks) is incredibly effective, and that sort of thought carries through the show, leaving the big "pops" of color to the entertainers (Evelyn Nesbitt and Harry Houdini) or the bands that march through on occasion. My only wish is that the set designer had trusted his concept and run with it for the whole show. Tateh's cart, the library furniture and the funeral wagon, are all far too real and solid, and step away from the way everything else is presented in a distracting way. The worst example is the street light that is dragged in for Coalhouse's dream in Act 2. It doesn't turn on (that may have been an error, this is still in previews) doesn't match the style of the set, and adds very little to the sequence. Cut it and trust the set to do its job, it is succeeding wildly on most other occasions. My other tiny quibble with the set is the central catwalk, that raises and lowers at several points in the show. They seriously need to check the rigging on that thing. There is a point in the second act where about 8 people are standing on it and with each new person that stepped on it dropped several inches. It took me right out of the show because I was afraid for the actors! I have no idea if anyone besides me would ever notice such a thing though.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that this production also boasts a 28 piece orchestra. Most Broadway productions these days make do with 15 pieces, if that, and I really never knew what an experience I was missing. The full rich sound that this orchestra produces is far superior, and will make you long to hear other shows produced this way.

In all, a nearly 5 star show. I am very happy to have seen it and would recommend it to anyone who is coming through the city.

No doubt this time... FIRE the graphic designer.

In the course of talking with a friend while hiking the other day I admitted to three moments of deep geekery when it comes to calendar dates in my life.

1) Today is Darwin 15th, 40 -- Sometime around 11th grade I read an article touting the "Tranquility Calender." A 13 month calender, designed for scientific use where each month has 28 days, and dates fall on the same day every year. To account for the 365th day there is Armstrong day, a day outside any month, and in leap years Aldrin day. I promptly started dating all of my papers and notes using this system. That lasted for about a year.

2) Today is the Feast of St. Bartholomew -- In art school I began a fascination with Saints Icons and Saints Days, and promptly started appending any date that I wrote down with the appropriate Saints Day. That lasted about two years.

3) Today is the first day of World Hearing Aid Awareness Week -- A few years ago I began an ongoing fascination with... odd holidays... you can read all about those here.

So... what does it say about me that for years now I have been looking for alternative ways to mark events in my life?

So... have you ever had one of those periods where you crave the same food over and over sort of irrationally? I'm sort of in the middle of that now. Caramel apples. I know, right? But at least marginally better for me than the period I spent eating a large brownie with milk every evening. (At least that's what I tell myself.)

For a few weeks my local grocery had them, and I was able to get them with ease. And now they don't... but I still want them. What the hell am I supposed to do? Anyone know a good source for caramel apples?

Ladies and Gentlemen! It's time for my new favorite game: Why The Graphic Designer Should Have Been Fired!

Today we have a subway ad for the Nova special "Becoming Human," a three part Nova series on human evolution.

The ad jokes that you can become human in "6 million simple steps" and lays out the first few:

1) Get out of tree
2) Grow big brain
3) Scratch vigorously
4) Shed
5) Flee animals
6) Chase animals
7) Make tools
8) Make fire
9) Make small talk... there are one or two others that are visible on other versions of the ad.

So what do we see? First there are some gross over-simplifications, like step 2. Whether we grew larger brains after leaving the trees, or as a part of being better able to move in trees is part of a huge debate. But we can leave that aside as just being advertising, I'm sure the actual Nova episodes go into more detail. Then there is the odd ordering of the steps... is shedding of body hair so important that it needs to be step 3? And did we really shed it before we discovered fire and tools? Our cousins the Neanderthal used tools, but we generally consider them to still be fairly hairy and apelike. But again... artistic license to tell a story quickly and easily in an ad.

What I really object to are the illustrations that accompany steps 5 through 7:

Flee animals... chase animals... make tools.

A pretty simple concept, right?

So why then does the human in step 6 already HAVE a spear? Is a spear not a tool? I mean... it's only 10 steps... you'd think you could get them in a fairly appropriate order... right?

So what do you think? Fire the graphic designer, or no?

(And for the record, yes... this is the type pf thing that I think about when the train is too crowded to draw...)