And all that jazz...

while scrolling Instagram videos last week I came across several that featured devoted fans gushing over the Broadway debut of Whitney Leavitt as the new Roxie Hart in the Broadway revival of Chicago...now in its 30th year...many of you are thinking who?...Whitney appeared in the Hulu series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives...and then gained national attention on last season's Dancing With The Stars...and they use the term "stars" very loosely...as social media permeates every inch of our lives...we, as a society, use that term "stars" pretty loosely too...the powerhouse that is Chicago has not shied away from putting a sliding scale of celebrity in starring roles over the years...to boost ticket sales?...Walter Bobbie, who as director, brought this incredible revival to Broadway...with the late, great Ann Reinking...has always felt that using celebrities bolstered by the best dancers reinforces the underlying theme of the show...fame, media manipulation, etc...not so sure Ms. Reinking or the original creator and genius Bob Fosse would agree...but they are not here to comment...when Chicago opened on Broadway in 1975 we were a country still reeling from our exit from Vietnam and the sting of Watergate...we, as an audience, perhaps did not want the subtext of the Kander and Ebb songs...the not so subtle irony that pervaded Fosse's vision...oh, and there was a little musical that also opened that year...A Chorus Line...Chicago closed after just two years...by the time the Chicago revival opened in 1996...we were much more jaded...we thought we were impervious to media manipulation...despite having survived the greatest performance by an actor in the 20th century...Ronald Reagan...but that revival...there was Bebe Neuwirth, slinky and wry...James Naughton...Joel Grey...and oh yes...Ann Reinking...those legs and husky voice and every shimmy a love note to Fosse...and then it was Pamela Anderson...Billy Ray Cyrus...and Bravo housewives...all while the best voices and legs stood in the wings and toiled eight shows a week...not good...makes me think of that song from Gypsy...You Gotta Have a Gimmick...please Mr. Bobbie...stop with the wannabee celebrity whoring in Chicago...or just admit the show is no more the acerbic vision of one of Broadway's greatest visionaries...and just a 21st century bump and grind burlesque...with wilting razzle dazzle...

Hopping into the Super Bowl, all "kid"ing aside...

Super Bowl 60...for NY fans...after a brutal season for both teams...it was almost like...who cares?...but there are football pools, new commercials, lots of diet-killing food to inhale...and the halftime show...which unless you live under a rock, you have heard about this ad nauseum...Bad Bunny...or Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio...clutch your pearls...a Puerto Rican superstar was scheduled to perform...in Spanish...and in a case of MAGA gone wild...Erika Kirk and Turning Point USA whipped together an alternative...an "American" show...headliner...Kid Rock...I still have not stopped laughing...and thinking...what the hell was Sheryl Crow thinking all those years ago when they were together...the whole thing was disgusting...if you don't care for the halftime artist then walk away...turn the channel...clean up the snacks consumed first half...or maybe...I don't know...watch...maybe you'll be surprised...or not...in a country as large and diverse as the United States maybe we can all agree that we all don't agree on everything...the halftime show is not a telecast of the nuclear codes...lighten the hell up...but the alternative show was nothing more than a paper thin cover of inherent racism...I don't speak Spanish...I've heard a lot of Bad Bunny and like his music...did I understand most of what he sang during halftime?...no...I took French in high school...so unless they bring Edith Piaf back from the dead for halftime it doesn't help...but, yes, I got everything he was saying in the subtext...down to the power lines that were climbed and their representation of how we have let Puerto Rico...part of the US...down in so many ways with helping them fix this wrecked power system...the end so jubilant...it was like watching an opera...and crying during Madame Butterfly or La Boheme...you get it, even if you don't speak the language...joy and sorrow and pride and hope are universal...Benito's emotions scattered across the field at Levi's Stadium for all to see...and yes, Mr. Bunny...the only thing more powerful than hate is love...

one potato, two potato, three potato...

in the middle of absolute soul scorching chaos in this country, I bring you a diversion...an Amazon tale...to make you laugh...and maybe think...a few weeks ago I was looking at my credit card charges online and saw something peculiar...a $2.14 charge to Amazon...I looked on my app and could not believe my eyes...an order for 1 Russett potato...which I did not place...I tried to cancel it and received a message that it was too late...it was shipped...now, some of you might be nodding your heads...realizing how this happened...for a while now when I make orders...a small page pops up with suggestions of things you might want to add to your order...potatoes are there...I probably tapped it while exiting...(although I never got the standard notification of the order)...and so about a day later an Amazon envelope sat outside my door...and inside was a rather large...albeit lonely...potato...Amazon ended up crediting me...but here's the thing that really got to me...the waste...the colossal waste in this system...the energy exerted to deliver one potato...did they refer to me as Mrs. Potato Head in fulfillment?...how much delivery van exhaust flooded my community?...how about the poor Amazon delivery person trying to make inhuman deadlines for the day...ah...a society demanding everything at once...potatoes on demand to be consumed while watching news that makes you want to throw up...and yes...the potato was delicious...