The Turd Finally Hits the Water

Somehow, I feel like we’ve been here before. As I mentioned a couple days ago, I had this great idea for ridiculous “Of the Month Club” ideas and offerings, and then I thought to myself, “Wait. Haven’t I done that already?”

And then I found myself unable to remember whether I had or not.

I suppose that, after 545 posts-or-thereabouts, it’s going to happen. I’m going to repeat myself. And that irritates me. There’s really no possible way to ensure that I haven’t already written about something, other than sifting aimlessly through the archives of this blog. And I’m not sure I want to do that. I have precious little time to blog and, when I have the time, I like to just sit down and do it. Rather like a big shit, it sort of just blorps out without me thinking too much about it and, the great thing about blogging as opposed to bigshitting is that my ass doesn’t get wet when the turd hits the water.

What?

This is kind of the reason why John Cleese left “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” after the end of the third season. Well, not because of blogging, or bigshitting, but because of repetition. He was growing tired of the lads same old schtick and, while it may seem to us, looking back at old recordings of their famed television show, that they were always creative and inventive and groundbreaking—really, they weren’t. Not all the time. They were beginning to get self-referential, beginning to use stock characters and careworn jokes, the same premise for a sketch that had been used three years prior, just with a slight twist. Or not. And Cleese, always the most restless and challenging to satisfy member of the group grew bored, stifled and, well, irritated. It’s no wonder that he went on to create, amongst lots of other things, a film called “How to Irritate People.”

And so he left the group. If you watch any episode from their fourth season, you will notice that tall, lanky, very funny figure being conspicuously absent. They tried to carry on, of course, but the show was doomed. In the “Michael Ellis/Ant” sketch, Graham Chapman is doing characters that were clearly meant for John to have done. It just wasn’t right. The show was finished. Yes, John came back for the feature films, but he wasn’t always happy about it. He was like the chick who got boobies first in middle school that the other awkward, portly, braces-wearing former friends kept dragging to the ice cream parlor on Saturday night.

I admit there were some ideas that I had brainstormed about this “Of the Month Club” calendar that made me chuckle. If you signed up for the STD-of-the-Month Club, they would send you Chlamydia or Herpes or Syphilis in a petrie dish. “STD’s: Collect ‘Em All!”

And there was the Autopsy Picture of the Month Calendar courtesy of your local sheriff’s department mortuary. “Support Local Law Enforcement by buying the Autopsy Pic of the Month Calendar. Remember: February is Transient Ischemic Attack Month!”

When you’d sign up for your AAA membership, for $29.99 more, you could upgrade to the Random Auto Part of the Month Club, where they would send you a roll-up window lever from a 1978 Chevrolet Malibu in June, or a catalytic converter from a 1981 Dodge St. Regis for whatever your birthday month is. Ever wanted the front passenger seat to a 1993 Plymouth Acclaim? Cross your fingers in January, and it might show up on your doorstep!

There was the Old School Cellphone of the Month Club and the Used Celebrity Underwear of the Month Club and the Sex Toy Lending Library and the Interstitial Disease Photo Album.

There was all of that. And then I started feeling like John Cleese. And I don’t want to feel like that. Worse, I don’t want you to feel like that either.

I also don’t want to feel like I’m blogging when I need to be looking for jobs—the guilt I feel, the pain it’s causing Mrs. Apron. If something doesn’t give, I’ll be unemployed in two-and-a-half lousy weeks, and I feel a little ridiculous sitting here trying to make merry and pretending like that isn’t happening when, really, it is. So I’m shutting this candy shop down until I’m gainfully employed.

Yes, I know I will lose readers and it’ll break my heart to see those stats I’ve worked to keep up (heh heh— keep up) take that inevitable downward dip, but I’ve got to grow up and stop kidding myself, and you.

Maybe I’ll be back for the feature films.

Touchie Scrollie Yumminess

Okay— I suck. Let’s just get it out there so we can all feel safe and secure and comfortable in my extreme suckness.

Why, oh, why do I suck so much? Because I’m totally smitten, you guys.

It's true. It happened to me. I have Droid envy.

I fell pretty hard last night. I was at a private singing rehearsal for “Iolanthe” and, after the rehearsal, the conductor and I were kibitzing about this and that, and we got to chatting about how much weight she’d lost recently. She told me that she keeps tabs on her weight loss with her phone.

And then she pulled it out.

There were charts and graphs and colorful… I don’t know… things! It was all scrollie and touchie and pretty and I wanted to touch touch but I restrained myself and I just watched in amazement because it was all pretty yummy like.

“Her data plan must be off the fucking charts,” I said to myself.

“And the best part is,” she said, “I tax deduct my data plan!”

D’OH!

She has a gym app and a calorie-counting app on her Droid and, oh, that’s not fucking all, children. She pulled out a 100 calorie Chips Ahoy packet from her workout bag and she, wait for it, MOTHERFUCKING SCANNED THE UPC LABEL!

She. Scanned. It. With. Her. Phone.

“Isn’t that cool?” she asked? By the way, this woman is a mother of two and at least fifteen years my senior.

“Uh, yeah it’s cool,” I replied, the saliva pooling in my mouth, “can’t you see my pupils dilating?”

All the nutritional information for her bullshit cookies appeared on the screen. Her weight-loss graph (green) was going in the correct, downward direction. She was very proud of herself, even though she surreptitiously covered her starting weight with her thumb. I was very envious of her, and I could barely conceal my jealousy and petty rage as I pulled out my decrepit-looking flip phone to schedule our next rehearsal. My phone cannot scan anything. It does PTT, though. But I don’t, um, PTT with… anyone. So… uh… Yeah.

It does play a charming selection of Gilbert & Sullivan ring-tones when people call me, though, and that’s, well, entertaining. For. Me.

We all know my thing with phones. I’m as fickle with them as I am with eyeglasses. A new one every six or eight months or so. Christ, I’ve had twelve cars since I was sixteen—are you noticing a pattern here? With phones, though, I vacillate between wanting a simplistic object strictly for calls and texts, and then wanting some brick-like thing to sync my email and go online and have GPS and radio the moon landing crew and listen to podcasts and generally be super annoying with.

Oh, and a full QWERTY keyboard would be nice to have again. You know, because I’m a verbose sumbitch and texting with proper punctuation and proper verbiage isn’t easy on a traditional flip-phone. After all, my thumbs aren’t twelve years old anymore and, when they were, they certainly weren’t texting. They were, like, up my ass while I tried to do math homework.

I know that, if I had a Droid, I wouldn’t be scanning the labels of Chips Ahoy bags. I would just, you know, have a Droid. To have one. And my data plan would be pound-me-in-the-ass expensive, and I wouldn’t have the testiculosis to write it off as a tax-deduction, because the IRS scares me and gives me mouth Ebola. Maybe I would become the asshole I was afraid of becoming when I gave up my Nokia E71x. Or my Palm Treo. That I would be staring it in the face all the time and hearing its text and email blips go off in my sleep.

But, isn’t that the way in which the world is spinning? Aren’t we all going to become those assholes some day? Married to our data plans and our touchie-scrollie yumminess? Aren’t we all going to become cyborgs with those fucking things in our ears?

Probably. Oh well—- chips ahoy!

More Snore

So, I was all prepped and primed to write another super-offensive post for this morning, centering around funny, hypothetical, as-yet-nonexistent “… Of the Month Club” offerings, (“Autopsy Pic of the Month”—- that kind of thing) but, after I lost two whole followers yesterday (like—where the fuck did you go? Indochina?) I figured maybe I ought to hold off on the nastiness for at least a day.

N’yah mean?

Instead, I thought maybe I’d write a little bit about sleep. It’s hard to get into trouble with your readers by writing about sleep. Right?

I haven’t been sleeping well at all recently—- maybe for the past two weeks or so. I really noticed it yesterday as I was shaving. Because I shave with my glasses off, I have to shave with my face practically pressed up against the mirror to actually see what the fuck I’m doing. I guess if I ever started cutting I would have to do it with my glasses on or I’d probably cut my arm off at the shoulder.

Anyway, I was standing there in the bathroom, my delicate ribs clearly visible through the tissue-paper thin layer of skin, craning my neck so I could be sure every half-Israeli hair would be suitably hacked off in short order, and I noticed that my eyes were very, very red. I guess that, coupled with the rapid descent in the genial nature of my personality, was what prompted a coworker to ask if I’d “started drinking yet.”

“No,” I said, “when I do, you’ll know it. I’ll start putting children in headlocks and I’ll cry a lot more. In public.”

That shockingly red spread of crinkly spiderwebs inside my ocular stuffs kind of took me aback. I don’t ordinarily manifest physical symptoms. I rarely exhibit side-effects of medication (except for that one time I got thrush on my tongue from an overzealous antibiotic prescription. For days my tongue looked like the shag carpeting on the set of “That ‘70s Show.”) and coffee/caffeine has absolutely no effect on me. I can drink 20 ounces of coffee in the morning and be a pathetic, lazy shitneck for hours on end, and I can drink a cup an hour before bed and fall asleep with no problem whatsoever.

Well, until recently.

For years, I’ve fallen asleep with absolutely no problem whatsoever. And that’s kind of a big fucking deal for someone with chronic anxiety and hypochondria to say. I mean, if I tried, I could keep myself awake for days on end thinking about all the ways I could die. And, when I was a little boy, I did just that.

So maybe I got a lot of that out of my system. There’s residuals still there, of course. Always residuals.

For the past couple weeks, though, my wife will conk out effortlessly, or so it seems, and I will lie there, staring up at the ceiling fan, or the seams in the ceiling wallpaper (yes, our bedroom ceiling is covered in white wallpaper. And it kind of kills me.) and I flip over and I lie on my side, shoving a hand in between two pillows, or underneath both pillows, or outstretched over the headboard.

Lying on my stomach isn’t helpful, because, unlike most bloggers, I’m a guy and, hence, my genitals are on the outside. Life’s no fun for a penis when it gets schmushed against a mattress. I know, it sounds kind of fun, but it isn’t.

I obsess, horizontally, in the dark. It’s just something that I do, but I’ve usually satisfied my subconscious by obsessing during business hours, and/or immediately thereafter. Obsessing on my blog is helpful, but, apparently, it just isn’t enough. I now find it necessary to obsess in bed. And that’s probably not healthy. Frank Lloyd Wright said that “bedrooms are for sleeping,” and he used that as a justification, I suppose, for building really small bedrooms. I mean, sure, you’re not supposed to be doing calisthenics in there, and I’m no athlete, sexual or otherwise, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to follow Wright’s maxim: sleep in your bedroom, asshole.

I worry in my bedroom. I obsess in my bedroom. I think.

What about? Oh, I don’t know. I think about the future. The present. The past. That’s the most useless, and, consequently, my favorite ruminatory endeavor. I replay idiotic things I said or did during the course of the day, I self-flagellate, I chastise, I shake my head at myself in disbelief sometimes. I get angry. I laugh to myself—sometimes out loud. I listen for the dogs shitting or clicking on the hardwood or whining or breathing. I watch my wife sleep. Sometimes she snores, sometimes she doesn’t.

I always do—when I sleep, that is.

I'm Gonna Be Rich, Bitch.

While I realize that My Masonic Apron will never be as popular as lolcats or Perez Hilton, I admit there are times when I entertain moderate delusions of grandeur and I think to myself,

“Apron, you old, moldy bastard—you could really make something out of this joint if you tried… expanded your horizons a little bit, took a cue, got a clue, pulled your peen out of your fly and let it sniff the air around it once in a while…”

I mean, really. If you look at some of the websites that looked like flash-in-the-pan pipe dreams but actually turned out to be hot-shit, Marie Antoinette masterpieces and moneymakers, there’s got to be some gold there for the mining, wouldn’t you say?

Take http://www.shitmydadsays.com/. I mean, they’ve even got their own annoying ad on the right-hand side of my Facebook account, sandwiched in between the ad for gay cruises and Obama putting hot-looking moms back to work. I mean, my father is Israeli and routinely expresses the urge to fuck somebody “up against a wall.” I could OWN shitmydadsays, and yet, I don’t. What is this? A lack of ambition? A dearth of outside-the-box-ness? Is my peen not sniffing enough outside air? I don’t know. Nevertheless, whilst in bed on Sunday night unable to sleep, my goodlady wife and I got creative and collaborated on some potential websites that could earn us some big motherfuckin’ bucks. I would so be all about creating the following websites.

If I only knew me some html…

1.) http://www.drunktextsfromgrandma.com/

I think we’re getting to the point where the grandmothers belonging to the generation that has come after mine are techno-savvy enough to have cellphones with text/data plans. No doubt, too, at least an appreciable portion of these crinkly old padded asses are alcoholics. As such, I think a website devoted to text messages Generation Y’ers are invariably receiving from their inebriated grandmothers would be a big hit. The website would include such gems as:

“the cat 8 my polident”

“call ems. jst sharted my muu-muu”

“these reduced sodium saltines r gr8”

and, of course, for the grammaws with full QWERTY's:

“b a dear and p/u some liniment salve for ur gran at cvs”

2.) http://www.shitmyparoleofficersays.com/

If you think that our nation’s parole officers are a heretofore unmined source for pith and pathos, well, sister—you’re with me. Let’s ride this pony till it bleeds and begs us to stop. Shit My Parole Officer Says Dot Com would be at times dry, at other times humorous, perhaps even a glimmer of inspiration would eke its way in there, too—you never know. But one thing’s for sure: parole officers don’t take no shit, even in the shit they say to their parolees. And, once you hear a thick-necked, tattoo-armed crazy sumbitch in sunglasses and a bullet-proof vest say, “You’re absconding, motherfucker!” you’ll bookmark that shit and check it five times a day.

3.) http://www.jockeybowling.com/

Sort of the same principle as midget bowling, but using jockeys instead! They’re so compact and cute and, in those ridiculous uniforms, highly visible. Just pick them up by their wedgies and toss those motherfuckers down a freshly-waxed bowling lane and you’ve got yourself a hit. Wanna spice it up? Integrate online betting. I’m talkin’ solid gold online hit. Solid. Just make sure your insurance policy has a head-injury rider.

4.) http://www.richkidsflippingout.com/

If there’s one thing that more awesome than trashy people flipping out (COPS, The Real World, Jersey Shore, Everybody Loves Raymond), it’s rich people flipping out—especially over-privileged, loudmouth, entitled and owed rich kids. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen two assholes wearing Izod shirts with upturned collars and Sperry Topsiders engage in a screaming match on the deck of one of their father’s yachts. Ever seen a teased up, spray-tanned shiksa rage at an incompetent shopkeeper in Scarsdale? Come on—you know you love that shit.

5.) http://www.surgeonsoncrack.com/

This is sort of inspired by the surgery channel, and it’s sort of inspired by the fact that I love medical oddities, and one of the first places I took my wife on a date was the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, which is devoted to that selfsame topic. There would be images and live webcam videos of surgeons on crack attaching feet to patients’ heads and surgically attaching Hitler moustaches to patients’ eyelids. And they’d, like, snort coke off their patients’ asses and the nurses tits and stuff. You’d, um, need to be… 18 to, uh, see it. I guess.

6.) http://www.whichcelebrityisgay.com/

It’s pretty much what it sounds like it is. Two pictures of celebrities who sort of look alike, and you have to vote on which one you think is, or should be gay. Like, we’d have a picture of Don King next to a picture of Larry Fine, and you’d have to say which one’s gay. The one with the most votes is, obviously, gay.

7.) http://www.oopsihumpedanun.com/

The purpose of this particular website is a tad more, shall we say, “confessional” than some of the other sites listed here. It’s for people who have, inadvertently, humped a nun in the course of daily life. I mean, hey—it happens. You thought she was just a dowdy-looking regular woman, and you humped her butt and stuff, and that was cool, but it turned out that she was a nun, and then you feel bad about it. So you come to this website and tell your story. And we laugh at you.

8.) http://www.wasmyassistantprincipalahottie.com/

Hey, you’ve always wondered, right? Well, at this website, created by the founder and executive moron of My Masonic Apron, is the place where you can finally get your voyeuristic, Back to the Future-like answer. Hop on into our virtual Delorean and travel back in time to 1948, when your middle school assistant-principal was sixteen or whatever. We’ve got yearbook and family photos of over 454,000 public, private, and parochial middle school assistant-principals that will finally answer the age-old question, “Was my middle school assistant-principal a hottie?” Sure, she’s gnarled and leathery and twisted up like a fucking pretzel now, but she might have had paperweight tits and a big rock candy mountain ass back in the day. Can you imagine—nutting off to grainy Kodaks of Mrs. Arpelschtein? Oh, yes. You can.

9.) http://www.measaminority.com/

You know those websites that show you what you’d look like as a cartoon? Well, now there’s a website that shows you what you’d look like as an African-American, an Asian, an Indian (either kind), a Canadian, or a Yanomamo tribe member. Wanna see what kind of ass you’d have if you were a black chick? Just upload a picture of your caboose and set http://www.measaminority.com/ loose!

Shake dat azz and make your Apron some money, bitch!

Wallet-Sized

I remember my first kiss. Most people do, I would think. I was working at a day camp as an apprentice, or CIT or whatever. I was fifteen years old, and it happened with a twelve-year-old camper. I don't remember the details, though she probably initiated it-- I know I never would have. While most likely a gross violation of camp policy, I guess not technically illegal. Nevertheless, it’s moments like these where I’m glad I blog anonymously.

Of course everyone remembers their first car. I technically had two first cars—the 1966 Volkswagen Beetle that my father crazily bought for me when I was fourteen, (a year before my illicit first kiss!), that I never actually drove, and the 1990 Ford Crown Victoria, ex-Delaware State Police car that I did actually drive, for four months. Until the engine blew up.

We remember our first jobs, our first apartments, our first intercoursings. We’re a nation obsessed with firsts, and with being first. The first in our social spheres to buy a house, to have a baby, to host a successful social function that doesn’t end in Brooklyn-style fisticuffs and nobody gets salmonella poisoning. We love our first earned dollar bills so much that we tape them up on the walls of our shitty little businesses, for all to see. We remember the first time someone who wasn’t related to us by blood said the words “I love you” to us, and we fixate on whether they still mean it after the break-up even though we know they don’t, and probably didn’t.

Prickballs.

While we are definitely defined in this world by our firsts, I’d be willing to bet that not too many of us remember our first wallets.

I don’t.

I got my first debit card when I was seventeen, and it was done primarily to assist me in the purchasing of college text-books. I guess I slipped it into a wallet of sorts after receiving it at the bank, but I don’t remember. I’m assuming that, by seventeen, I had a wallet, but I couldn’t say for sure, and if I had one, it probably wasn’t my first one. Though I don’t remember, I’d be willing to bet that my first wallet had Velcro, because things made for people who aren’t yet adults tend to have Velcro on them. Unless we’re talking about diabetic sneakers, of course, those often have Velcro on them, too because, apparently, when you have diabetes, you lose the ability to tie your shoes.

That noise drives me crazy.

Anyway, I have no recollection of receiving and/or purchasing my first wallet. It seems to me, thinking upon it, that a wallet should kind of be a big fucking deal to a boy or even a burgeoning man, but it isn’t. At least, it wasn’t for me. And this is coming from someone who bought himself an antique, gold-filled pocket watch at age 13 with $300 of his Bar Mitzvah money.

I’m thinking about all of this because, on Saturday night, I replaced my wallet. Mrs. Apron and I were on a hot date at TJ Maxx (the only way it could have been any hotter would be if TJ added an extra “x”). She bought a pair of Naturalizer shoes (I picked them out—I knew she would love them because they sported a comically oversized faux button on the strap—just the right detail). She also bought for herself a $5.00 pink, frilly tu-tu (“I’ll only wear it with tights or leggings underneath!” she vowed in the store) and an Ed Hardy bikini, which is slightly psychedelic, but very cute. It fits her, it’s cute, and the swimsuit-purchasing-ordeal did not make her cry or resemble a Cathy cartoon in any way, so I was happy. I bought two Ralph Lauren dress-shirts (the total cost of which did not even equal the MSRP of one) and, well, my new wallet.

It’s kind of changing my life.

See—it’s a “front wallet.” I didn’t know such things existed until my wife and sister and I went to the Borgata in Atlantic City last weekend as part of our Hindenburg-style family vacation. We did just what we said we were going to do: blow $20.00 on the slot machines and go to the silly, overpriced stores to window-shop. In one such silly store, there was an array of Fossil products—bags for women, and wallets for men. That is where I first encountered the front wallet. It’s smaller and thinner than regular wallets, and it’s meant to go in your front pocket, as opposed to an egregious, uncomfortable addition to one of your ass-cheeks.

Madonna Mia, I thought, because Jewish people don’t say shit like that out loud, this is for me. However, I wasn’t going to pay $24.99 for it. I went home and searched Ebay for front wallets. $24.99, plus $5.45 shipping. Damnit.

At TJ Maxx, however, one called to me for $9.99. I yoinked it.

Now that I have one, I kind of don’t know how I did it for so long without one. It’s rather like having a cell-phone in that way. Who the hell were we before cell-phones? Obviously terrible people who were quiet in public places. Yesterday, I had to drive somewhere that was forty minutes away. Driving without a bulbous lump under one of my ass-cheeks was such a pleasure, I can’t even tell you. My mother had been on me for months about putting my regular wallet in my front pocket because keeping it in the back is bad for people with scoliosis and other annoying Jewish maladies. I tried that for about ten minutes one day, but it looked like I had a brickrection. Not going to happen. The front wallet, with its purposefully fewer pockets and such, is the answer.

It’s kind of changing who I am, though, and I’m not totally comfortable with that yet. See, I had all these pictures of my dogs, and my wife’s old passport pictures and little hand-scrawled love notes from Mrs. Apron and my library card and my EMT and CPR cards and my eyeglass cleaning cloth and my Staples rewards card and my AAA card and my voter registration card in my wallet and now, well, I kind of don’t have room for them anymore.

I suppose it’s like minimalist, Bauhaus living, in my front pocket. Doing more with less. Pairing down. The pocket-purge.

It’s scary. Big wallets are kind of in my blood.

My father’s wallet is approximately the size and weight of a corned beef sandwich from the Carnegie Deli. It doesn’t go into his rear pocket, or his front pocket, or any pocket because, well, it can’t. You’d need a hammock to effectively transport this wallet if you didn’t want to carry it around in your hand—which is exactly what he does. Oh, and it’s so crammed full of credit cards and discount cards and rewards cards and Starfux cards and slips of paper and Christ knows what else that it doesn’t actually close on its own—there’s a rubber band around it.

Sometimes, two.

Not only are all of the aforementioned goodies contained, or should I say "trussed up" in his wallet, there are pictures-- of my mother, of my sisters, of me. There are multiple pictures of each of us, in various stages of development. There is a picture of my father and my oldest sister that, on the back, is signed by actor David Keith. My father met him on a train once and that was the only thing my father had for him to sign. It's kind of funny to me. My father also keeps a note I wrote to him when I was fourteen or so. I left it for him on the dining room table the night before, so he would read it when he awoke for work, at 4:30am.

"Daddy-- would you please pre-tie my kangaroo tie for me? The length doesn't matter, it will be under a vest."

I love my father, even though he's a hairy gorilla man with a Volkswagen-sized wallet.

You’ll know him instantly if you see him—a handsome, young-looking Israeli man ("That can't be your dad!" a friend texted me after she saw him at a run downtown) with hair everywhere except for his head padding around the streets looking for the nearest Camera Shop or grocery store selling grapes for $0.63/lb. in a t-shirt, athletic shorts, dress shoes with no socks, gripping onto an impossibly-sized wallet, held together with some sort of vulcanized adhesive strap. Just don’t stare—he might take out one of his false teeth with his tongue, and you won’t sleep for weeks.

To See the Stars

When I got the email, I admit that I got a little tingly in the trousers. And, no, it wasn't an email offering a way to get a "BIGGER PEN!S"

The e-mail touted half-price tickets to the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music.” It’s easily one of my favorite musicals, wedged somewhere in between “Into the Woods” and “Assassins,” also by Sondheim (no, I’m not gay) and Jason Robert Brown’s “Songs for a New World.” Now, if you’re saying to yourself, “Wait—- what about all that G&S shit,” honey—those are operettas, not musicals. Jesus Beezus, have I taught you nothing?

Anyway, the reason folks were being offered half-price tickets is because Catherine Zeta Jones, who was appearing in the run as Desiree Armfeldt, was unable to perform on said weekend, and so the theatre management resorted to slashing box office prices to fill the house in her absence.

And I thought to myself, “Well, she’s hot and everything—but I just want to see the show. I can ogle moving and/or still images of Catherine Zeta Jones online at any time and besides, at the Walter Kerr Theatre, I would have to keep my trousers on.

Now, I know I think too much about things that probably shouldn’t require such exertion of my admittedly limited brain power, but the notion of selling half-price tickets to a Broadway show just because the big, hot-shit actress is in Maui getting her nipples repinkified kind of rubbed me the wrong way—even though my wife and I were the beneficiaries of a wonderful show. Doesn’t it devalue the importance and significance of the rest of the cast by saying, “Well, you’re all not good enough to justify people shelling out the full coinage to see your sorry asses unless Catherine Zeta-Jones is present in all of her Welsh yet ambiguously Asian glory to behold”?

I mean, if I were the twitchy d-bag playing Henrik, I’d be kind of pissed. N’yah mean?

It speaks, I think, to one of the problems that I see with live theatre, at least in America. It has gotten to the point where producers and other affiliated shittynecks are saying to themselves, “Well, the only way we can get these stupid motherfucker Americans into a theatre to see a play is to cram as many A-list celebrities onto the stage as humanly possible because, if we don’t, why the hell would people come see a play?”

I mean, why not just stay at home and Netflix Catherine Zeta-Jones? Much cheaper than seeing a Broadway play, yes?

I don’t know what happened to seeing a play for the sake of the play—its story, its plot construction, the complexity of its characters, the wit and wisdom of the writing, the subtle nuances that you just don’t get in a film or a TV show. I don’t know why we have to get our tussies tickled by the notion that Jeff Goldblum and Mercedes Ruehl are in “Prisoner of Second Avenue.” Why can’t we just see it because it’s a Neil Simon play and because we’ll laugh our balls off (if we’re Jewish).

What’s funny is that there’s a totload of super talented performers out there who are professionally trained stage actors—that is what they do and that is all they do—and they are consistently beaten out for sexcellent roles by Hollywood fartstarts because they have big names (and pricetags) and the classically-trained stage actors are waiting tables, living in cardboard boxes, or sitting in waiting rooms reading “Good Housekeeping” in the background of Celebrex commercials.

Why can’t TV actors do fucking TV, film actors do fucking films, and stage actors do fucking plays? Believe me, I know that live theatre needs to be saved, but putting Helen Hunt in as the Stage Manager in “Our Town” isn’t going to get Broadway off its ventilator and breathing on its own.