SLINGS & ARROWS

Just finished watching all three seasons of it and can't get enough of it.
Adored it, of course. A show that gets the theater right from top to bottom and made me miss show business.
The show tracks a Canadian festival's mountings of Shakespeare plays and one musical.
They almost made me like "Romeo and Juliet." And I'm now a "Hamlet" convert.
I'm partial to the stage manager character, of course. But I have a fondness for Anna, the associate administrative director.
Can't re-fashion it into an American show, like "The Office" or "Queer as Folk," because we don't really have a national theater or a theater festival familiar enough to portray. No Stratford or Shaw Festival or RSC. Transposed to community theater, it might work.

Away Message

Off to the Golden State.
To attend a wedding and take a holiday.
Anxieties of meeting the "in laws" and
if there's one thing I learned from "The Amazing Race,"
it's that trips try the tensile strength of any relationship.
Here's hoping this trip will be like that ocean in the west: Pacific.

Front Porch

Reading Sarah Vowell's "Assassination Vacation," I came across James Garfield's front porch campaign. The candidate literally campaigned in his house. His supporters would visit his home to hear him bloviate on his views. I kind of see his guests loitering in the lawn. This got me thinking what if 2008 candidates campaigned in their own front porches? I was really more interested in their houses. This may be how the HGTV bloc are voting: comparing home fronts.

John McCain's Arizona home.

Barack Obama's Chicago, IL home

P.S. to Arsenic and Donne

Appending previous posts.

"Arsenic":
Who knew? Arsenic still fills the beauty counter according to the article below.

Ancient, but How Safe?
By ABBY ELLIN
Published: NY Times, September 18, 2008
The health industry has questions about metals like lead, mercury or arsenic being found in ayurvedic supplements.

"My First Code":
I mentioned "Wit," Margaret Edson's play, on that post. My lit profs in high school lobbed that John Donne poem "Death Be Not Proud" at us every semester. (On one hand, I'm fed up with it, but on the other, I thank them for it because a Donne poem actually appeared in the essay section of the AP Lit Exam. I now wish I had written how the man loved his commas.) No escape from that poem. Dame Eileen Atkins' lecture from the "Wit" movie breaks it down for you:

Emmy Dis

I'm with Katherine Heigl snubbing tonight's primetime Emmys.
(Did you know she sells her own line of medical scrubs? It makes me "Izzie.")
Not because the writers slacked off, but the awards' nominating body dissed HBO's "The Wire" for the fifth time. Get this. Only 2 nominations for its entire run! I know that its language/dialogue/street poetry poses the main barrier to appreciating it. So turn on the subtitles/close captioning! And prepare to get lost in its octopus-like storytelling tentacles.

Related article:
‘The Wire’ receives one last Emmy snub - Show received only one nomination, for the writing of its series finale
From: Associated Press

Despite that, I'm rooting for Tina Fey, "30 Rock," and the resuscitated "Lost."

Bed

Bed sharing 'drains men's brains'
From BBC News
Bed sharing disturbed sleep quality.
Sharing a bed with someone could temporarily reduce your brain power - at least if you are a man - Austrian scientists suggest.

Is the claim true for gay men since the study sample only included hetero couples?
Am I getting dumber? Is my BF getting dumber?
Is that why I find Professor Layton's puzzles harder now more than ever?
Maybe they had it right in the old movies and TV shows when couples slept in separate beds.
However, I don't doubt this statement from the article:

"Bed sharing also affected dream recall. Women remembered more after sleeping alone and men recalled best after sex."

Arsenic

What I learned at the movies today:
That arsenic is more than rat poison and sold at Victorian Sephora counters as skin care?
Courtesy of David Lean's "Madeleine" (1949). I so wanted to like this movie but Ann Todd ruined it for me. In the hands of a better actress - plug in a Hitchcock blonde - and the movie would easily rank as a bona fide classic. Based on a true case, did she or didn't she poison her lover with arsenic?
The next time I give arsenic as chemo (FDA approved), I'll dab the leftover on my skin and tell you if it's better than my Clinique regimen.

In the Victorian era, "arsenic" (colourless, crystalline, soluble "white arsenic") was mixed with vinegar and chalk and eaten by women to improve the complexion of their faces, making their skin paler to show they did not work in the fields. Arsenic was also rubbed into the faces and arms of women to "improve their complexion".
-Wikipedia

"You cut me open and I keep on bleeding ..."

Inappropriate song to sing at work, Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love."
I kept telling my co-worker this. But she will not stop, because I won't stop giggling.

ANNA KARENINA

2008: the summer I finally read "Anna Karenina."

Took me more than a month, not because it was a difficult read, but because I wanted to savor the novel's richness with its enormous cast and the detailed rendering of 19th century Russia. Who knew Russian farming and elections could be interesting?
Tolstoy has the knack for drawing believable and engrossing characters. He opens windows to their souls imperceptibly (at first) that it's like a magic act. Before you know it, you are as hooked as they are to their own wants and passions.

Plotwise: Anna has an affair, flees a loveless marriage, and throws - er - I don't wanna ruin the ending for those who don't know. The "B" plot or the courtship of Levin and Kitty will appeal more to the Harlequin Romance set.

It touches on practically all the grand themes of life, but I'll back up my claim that above all else, it's about family from its opening line/thesis: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

I'm sure I'm not the only one who found Anna difficult to like. She is so annoyingly human and (dare I say it?) so female with her needs and jealousies. And also because there's a question I can't seem to answer: Why does she not love her second child?

My First Code

Perhaps Death Is Proud; More Reason to Savor Life
By THERESA BROWN
Published: September 9, 2008
A staff nurse tells her first experience with “Condition A,” the sudden death of a patient.

Near the end of my first year as an RN (or Real Nurse).
The article on NY Times chronicled the first code ("condition A" = cardiac arrest) I encountered - aka the Exorcist case.
Uncanny similarities in details from my experience that I thought one of my colleagues had written it.

"Inside the room I found my patient with blood spilling uncontrollably from her mouth and nose. I remembered to put on gloves, and the aide handed me a face shield."

I remember grabbing a box of face shields, an item we don't normally wear in a code.
The floor was like a slip-and-slide, with blood instead of water.

"The reigning theory was that part of her tumor had broken off and either ruptured her pulmonary artery or created a huge blockage in her heart. Apparently this can happen without warning in lung cancer patients."

Many of us posited this theory as well. The suddenness of it shocked us all.
How can you explain this to a grieving family member when the patient was walking and talking mere hours ago?
That code became legendary - a profound shared experience between those who were there: it gave us nightmares (experienced and new RNs alike). I found it cool in a morbid way. But it was so traumatic for many that the manager had to send a counselor to verbalize our feelings about it.

Regarding the article: About time a nurse has written for the Science Times.
But why does it have to be a feel-good piece about death and dying?
Besides, I'm sick of John Donne being quoted in oncology - let "Wit" be the end of that.

Listening to ... McCartney

Jesse, that is. Not the Beatle McCartney.
More like ogling than listening.

Playing ... "Professor Layton"

Playing "Professor Layton and the Curious Village" on the DS. The game offers a series of puzzles strung along a threadbare mystery. Another way to stave off Alzheimer's.

Stumped on a puzzle in the game that reminds me of an old mathematical problem sprung on us sophomore kids at a special program in City College: The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg. Based on the map below, was it possible to make a journey across all seven bridges without having to cross any bridge more than once? Drunk people claim to have done so.


You can google for the answer. Only later (years) did I grasp the mathematical significance of the puzzle. Mathematicians are exempt from playing this!

Scope

Frankly, I expected this from my friends, not my mother.

Standing at the doorway, she wore a smile that's an obvious prelude to announcing some exciting news.

"I had my colonoscopy," she said. "They found a polyp and took it out."
Only my mother could seem thrilled about such a procedure.

"Do you want to see?" Before I could say no, she showed me the pictures from her colonoscopy! - Which shows her rectum from the scope's point of view, btw.

Used to my friends showing me their wounds and rashes. Not with my mom.
Evidently, mother has never heard of things being TMI. (Too much information.)

And that is what my mother did on her 30th wedding anniversary.

September

How come there are many songs about September?
"See You in September"
"The September Song"
"September"

Because it's the end of summer vacation?
The new school year?
Fall lurking around the corner?
The beginning of the end of the year? Of months that end in r?

Just because it's September, here's a crowd-pleaser from Earth, Wind, and Fire.
I dare you not to groove.

Stay-cation

You know it's the first day of school when the kids in the subway are donning their new clothes.
From the bright colored shirts that have yet to see a rinse cycle, one can tell.
More envious of their shiny new sneakers with nary a scuff nor blemish.

Since summer's unofficially over, rather than say what i did in my stay-cation (mostly work), I'll list the things that may not be too late to do:

-Bid farewell to the old Yankee Stadium
-Line up to see "Hair" in the Park
-Long Beach
-Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge
-Frisbee time