Can ANYONE explain the new Cartier commercial to me?

I saw it last night when it aired during The Good Wife.  Granted, I'm not their target audience, but even my lovely wife, who has excellent taste (well, excellent taste in everything except for one choice!) was baffled.  

I will say that, if the Wright Brothers had, in fact, a large quadruped on their glider, I'm even more impressed by those Dayton, Ohio boys!

Aside from Michael Caine, is there an actor who's worked more consistently...

...for the past 40 years than Edward Hermann?  And, I must admit, I never tire of him!

Paper Chase, 1973

Eleanor and Franklin, 1977

MASH, 1980

Reds, 1981

Annie, 1982

Gilmore Girls, 2000-2007

.

Not to mention:

...The Great Gatsby

The Great Waldo Pepper

The Aviator

Purple Rose of Cairo

The Emperor's Club

Day of the Dolphin...

...and St. Elsewhere

The Practice

30 Rock

Law and Order

Gray's Anatomy 

The Good Wife...

Yes, Davy Jones was pretty swell, but let's not forget Bobby Sherman...

...and who knew about the Bobby Sherman BEFORE he was THE Bobby Sherman?

The seersucker suit, the tap dance moves,

a great old song.

Man, I've never wanted to be Bobby Sherman more than now

(and, back in 1970, I really wanted to be Bobby Sherman)!

Younger daughter as "Frenchy" in the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy production of Grease...

...in the "Beauty School Drop-out" number, as sung by the HMTCA band director Mr. Tom Franklin, and with "Teen Angel" costumes by Frenchy's mom, Martha Perry!

Three people whom I wish others would stop interviewing and/or giving links to...

...because they're simply saying (outrageous, stupid, insulting, silly) things to get noticed:

Rush Limbaugh

Bobby Valentine

and

BobbyValentineandRushLimbaugh.

Face it, Rush Limbaugh ain't getting fired no matter how outlandishly he speaks, so, if you disagree with him (and God bless you if you don't!), please stop listening.  He wants to offend everyone who's not a dittohead. Ignore him.  He wins every time you link to a story about him -- yes, even a negative one. 

Bobby Valentine is a dope who has never won a World Series.  His former colleagues from ESPN have been touting him for every available coaching job for years, and I'm pretty convinced it was just to get him out of the building.  He's not nearly as clever as he thinks he is (remember the fake mustache?), so please stop asking him questions.  Wait until his team starts winning or losing games that actually matter...and, maybe, not until June. 

I hope (for my students' sake) that I've learned a little something since kindergarten...



...but I can't argue with hardly anything that I saw this past Sunday in All I Really Need to I Know I Learned in Kindergarten that runs at Playhouse on Park until March 11th.  The series of sketches with music based on the popular book by Robert Fulghum (adapted by Ernest Zulia with music and lyrics by David Caldwell) was full of recognizable and touching situations that allow the audience to acknowledge once again the beauty and the goodness that's around us.  If that sounds sweet, you're absolutely right, but it's supposed to be.

Accompanied by my younger daughter, who enjoyed the production and performances, as well, I got the opportunity to instruct her on the meaning of didactic literature (i.e., a poem, story, play, etc. meant to teach its audience something).  At the end of a very funny vignette, entitled "MOTB" ("Mother-of-the-Bride"), which recounts the fate of the controlling title character when faced with an impossibly disastrous wedding, we are offered, as it were, the moral of the story...the thing that makes sure we see MOTB as something more than a punch-line.

As I explained to my daughter, the danger of didactic literature, of course, is its potentially reductive quality -- its seeming insistence that the audience forget everything but that moral. 

But the beauty of the performances throughout this production is that they are so rich that, while the script may make the moral clear, the actors (Jeff Horst, Richard Dennis Johnson, Scott Scaffidi, Megan Snyder, and Denise Walker) and directors (Joe Keach-Longo and Kevin Barlowski, music) never compromise the fullness of the tales they bring to life.  So whether it's the pig in Cinderella, or the patting of an older parent, or a man in a hot-air-balloon/lawnchair high above a major metropolitan area, the audience can't but be very much engaged -- because they aren't walking and talking moral exempla, they are people, like us, with stories to tell.

One personal note: the segment "Problem or Inconvenience" (about learning to distinguish between the two) hit very close to home since my father, who suffered with Multiple Sclerosis for 30+ years (moving steadily from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair to a scooter to a bed), never referred to his illness as anything other than his "inconvenience." 

If that seems just about right, you'll really enjoy Kindergarten.

And, if that seems a bit preachy, then you need to see Kindergarten.


         

So, "Connecticut Wit" has been included in the Hartford Magazine...

..."Best Of..." voting for 2012 under the "Best Blogger" category. 

Feel free to show your love by going to the site and clicking on "Local People." 

Voting ends March 7th.

MANY thanks to whomever cast the first vote!  (And thanks to Best Weathercaster nominee, and CCSU colleague, Darren Sweeney for the heads-up.) 

The Management