7/13/02
...I reach for my culture. Which is what I've been doing, mostly, the last few days--reaching for comforting and familiar bits of New York and indie-pop culture. On Thursday, I led the annual expedition to Shakespeare in the Park: this year it's Twelfth Night, with Julia Stiles and Jimmy Smits in the cast, and a production with wonderfully creative stage design, plus direction that pretty much treats it as a slapstick comedy with a little bit of love interest thrown in. Really, the only off element is Duncan Sheik's music, which pretty obviously doesn't belong.
Without going into too much detail, that evening was followed by a meal at Asia de Cuba, a Yo La Tengo show in Prospect Park (with the entire population of Brooklyn, plus all their toddlers, cheering covers of "Let's Get Rid of New York" and Sun Ra's "Nuclear War"), a meal at the Bright Food Shop, a trip to some famous magic store in Manhattan whose name I'm already forgetting, and Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music show at Joe's Pub. Who says this isn't the Mighty Marvel Age of Doing Way, Way Too Much Stuff?
And what did I think of all this? And did I have any interiority at all going on during any of it, or was I just the experienceatron? Tell ya sometime. Maybe when I've had a little sleep first.