New venues, 2024

  • Warner Brothers Theatre, National Museum of American History, Washington
  • Cadby Theatre, Chesapeake College, Wye Mills, Md.
  • Old Town Hall, Fairfax, Va.
  • Baltimore Theater Project, Baltimore, Md.
  • Milton Theatre, Studio Theatre, Washington
  • 1057 W. Broad St., Falls Church, Va.
  • Dance Studio, Clarice Smith Center, College Park, Md.
  • Memorial Chapel, University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

Plus multiple venues out-of-town in New York: five jazz clubs big and small, David Geffen Hall, and The Shed.

On Metro North

One follow-up to my New York trip that I overlooked: Metro North names some of their passenger cars to recognize people, places, and things. On my trip back from Beacon, I had the honor of riding in car #6163, Thelonious Monk.

Where can I find a list of all the cars’ names?

New York 2024 bis

I made a second trip to New York this year! The impetus was seeing the Vivian Maier show at Fotografiska before that venue closes its doors. Also on the gallery/museum visit checklist was

  • Brooklyn Botanic Garden: the Franklinia trees were looking rather peaky, but I did spot a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) in one of the flower beds. The Japanese garden was a bit of a disappointment; I don’t understand why the torii was placed in the pond. Some traffic noise, but overall, the BBG is worth a return visit.
  • A (for the most part picturesque) ride up the Hudson on Metro North to Dia Beacon, to see some “old friends” (Robert Ryman, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra). I liked the Steve McQueen installation downstairs (Bass): it felt like waiting on a subway platform for the train out of Purgatory.
  • International Center of Photography, now on Essex Street.
  • MoMA PS1 for James Turrell’s Meeting, seen under perhaps perfect afternoon conditions: some haze in the blue sky, tumbles of clouds sliding by.

I rolled out in the direction of the Rockaways on the A to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (an NPS property, despite its name). Birding was slow in the late morning, but a Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) flitted about and a trio of Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) perched up. I found a few new plants that I did not recognize, a couple of non-native invasives (Rosa rugosa and Saponaria officinalis) and a startling mint, Monarda punctata. I watched a Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) steal a cicada from an Eastern Cicada-killer Wasp (Sphecius speciosus): after the wasp lost its meal, it spiraled in angry circles around the scene of the robbery. I killed my first Spotted Lanternfly. And my second. Any my third. Walking the coarse gravel path around the West Pond in my hiking sneakers began to wear out my feet.

novel wayfindingThe A runs underground until 80th Street, so I had ample time to admire some brilliant innovative tech: as the train approaches a station, doors on the exit side are framed in green light, and the strip map above each door changes to a map of the platform with the train berthed, with your car marked with a “You are here.” Arrows direct you to stairs, elevators, connecting trains and (in the outlying stations) major buses, and street intersections. Wayfinding right when you need it, before you step on to the platform. Let’s hope that this tech makes its way on to the other lines. The gold and cobalt blue accents in the livery are quite handsome.

reset 1reset 2For all of the New York subway’s crashed message boards,

restorationfunky stinks, cramped escalators (looking at you, E and M at Lexington Avenue-53rd Street), squonky noises, confusing service changes for maintenance (for a trip back from Columbus Circle, it would have been faster to walk, even accounting for the fact that I jumped on the wrong 7 train), and random rust stains, once in a while you find a bit that has been restored to glory. Here’s a station marker on the Lexington line that’s just superb.

I visited three jazz clubs new to me:

  • Dizzy’s Club: rather posh, bar seating works well.
  • Blue Note: very snug, not for claustrophobes.
  • Jazz Gallery: no frills, no minimums, just right.

comes in all sizesSome views from my jewel box hotel on East 55th Street: an old school shoe repair shop.


cornice, railings, orange fenceMr. Johnson, I presumeFrom the 7th floor terrace, buildings at the corner of Lexington, and in the distance down at Madison, a partial view of what I still think of as Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building, now just known as 650 Madison.

On my way back to the subway from the Joyce Theater, I was feeling peckish for dessert. Poof! appeared an Oddfellows ice cream shop at the corner of 17th Street. A generous scoop of vegan chocolate-chocolate chunk was very good.

Some links: 102

  • People movers (mobile lounges) at IAD are sticking around for at least 20 more years. I like ’em. Remember to hold on for when the lounge starts to move! (Eurgkkh, lots of clickbaity slop on this local TV news channel page.)
  • Why did Tom Lehrer give up writing, recording, and performing? Francis Beckett doesn’t really answer this question, but he does offer a nice recap of Lehrer’s oeuvre for the younger folks.
  • Jason Kottke reprises this lovely post about flying in a small plane with his father in the upper Midwest. Low on fuel. With a thunderstorm approaching.

    But the thing was, I was never scared. I should have been probably…it was an alarming situation. I’d been flying with my dad my whole life and he’d kept me safe that whole time, so why should I start worrying now? That’s what fathers are supposed to do, right? Protect their children from harm while revealing the limits of the world?

  • When I visited the Westmoreland Museum of American Art last month, I noticed that several works were labelled “artist once known.” Here’s an explainer from the Hood Museum of Art for that new convention.

I haven’t really decided whether I will continue posting at IEFBR14. In the meantime, here are two computing/math links:

A mystery: 27: and solved

I have become mildly obsessed with Mantovani’s anodyne arrangement of “Charmaine,” perhaps the epitome of easy listening/elevator music. When I worked on Clybourne Park, it was one of the songs on Jim’s mixtape. I’ve just finished reading Joseph Lanza’s Elevator Music, which has a few additional tidbits about the song (I wish that Lanza had included song titles in his index).

What has been nagging me is the dance performance that I alluded to back in my 2016 post: I could not summon any memories of it, except bland white background paper, dancers in black, and a burly, bearded male dancer crossing his arms in exasperation. What was the company? Not Mark Morris, although the dancer had a similar build. Where did I see it? Probably at the Kennedy Center.

And then comes Brian’s Siebert’s story on the long-running collaboration between Alex Katz and Paul Taylor.

With the rift behind them, Katz and Taylor continued their mischief. “I said to Paul, ‘You’re so good you could choreograph to elevator music,’” Katz recalled. “And Paul said, ‘I’m not dancing to that trash.’ And three months later, he said let’s do it.” This was “Lost, Found, and Lost” (1982), a brilliantly funny piece with chic black costumes, a flat white stage world and recycled bits of “7 New Dances.”

Yep, the $100 Jeopardy! answer, Paul Taylor Dance Company, whom I have probably seen four or five times.

A hat tip to Angela Kane and her catalogue of Taylor’s works, which confirmed that “Charmaine” was indeed part of the score for this dance.

Peculiar Muzak: 8

Not, strictly speaking, Muzak, because it was clearly an album/CD that I was listening to in my urologist’s office (while the receptionist was doing a great job of Fully Committed with a difficult patient): arranged for breathy girls’ choir and piano, pop hits from the 80s and 90s. I could make out through the pillowy arrangements and crappy speakers

  • “Follow You Follow Me”
  • “Boys Don’t Cry” (with particularly obfuscatory dynamics)
  • “Barbie Girl”
  • “In the Air Tonight” (with no drum drop—what’s up with that?)
  • And the mystery as a bonus, because I cannot make out who committed such an enormity. Spotify is fine for finding one song, but not an entire track list. But wait—the Googles came through. The CD (Solstice by Scala & Kolacny Brothers) was on shuffle!

    I don’t think you’ve lived until you’ve experienced this version of “Creep”:

    As Martin Vanderhof said,

    GRANDPA [surveying the group]: Well, sir, you should have been there. That’s all I can say—you should have been there.