So They Think They Can Dance

Apparently it's not enough that robots are stealing our jobs and visiting Mars and plotting bloody insurrection beneath our very (still organic, unlike theirs) noses. No, they have to go and usurp our recreational activities as well. Is there nothing on which these terrible automatons do not have nefarious designs?

TONY TONY TONY

It is time for us to take a break from our work-imposed exile from the blogosphere to weigh in on one of the most salient reflections of contemporary culture available to those without a PhD. We refer, of course, to the Tony nominations.

Named for Marie “Antoinette” Perry, the nation’s first hard-nosed female theatre producer (whose penchant for firing artists at the drop of a hat led to the misplaced decapitatory overtones of her nickname), the Tonys are a yearly tradition in which Broadway congratulates itself for being so fabulous. The nominations for the 2007 awards were announced this year by actors Jane Krakowski and Taye Diggs as they skydived from a plane above Manhattan before a stunt parachute landing in the middle of Times Square.

Broadway babies have been predicting the nominees since well before any of the shows opened, meaning the result will have come as no surprise to those in the know. For the rest of the world, however, the list presents a fascinating matrix of the state of the world (at least the musicals do; nobody pays attention to the plays). Let us examine the shows that are in the running for Best Musical.

• Curtains
  In this musical adaptation of the hit television sitcom Frasier, David Hyde Pierce (playing, in a typical piece of Broadway stunt casting, the title role originated by Kelsey Grammar) goes from radio shrink to private eye to musical-theatre star and finally back to radio shrink when the whole thing turns out to be a dream. It is the final collaboration of Kander and Hammerstein, the duo responsible for such hits as South Chicago, The Cabaret and I, and The Sound of the Spider Woman. This show represents old people.
  
  
• Mary Poppins
  Remember how everybody loves movies and nobody loves theatre? Mary Poppins does, and she’s going to use a “spoonful of sugar” to make sure that people forget that truism while forking over $100 a ticket instead of slapping the film onto the end of the Netflix queue. For some reason things that happen right in front of you are more expensive than things that happened in the past that someone pointed a camera at. Anyway, this show represents children.
  
  
• Grey Gardens
  Another movie show, but this one based on an obscure documentary. The original film posits the theory that JFK was murdered by arrangement of his wife, Jackie O, and that she tried to frame her relatives, a couple of crazy old women on Long Island, for the crime. In this version, the crazy old women don’t actually kill JFK, but instead sit around their crumbling house singing about food and clothes. This show represents gay people.
  

• Spring Awakening
  Based on August Strindberg’s controversial play of the same name, this show is about how rock-and-roll originally emerged in late 19th-century Germany, only to be repressed by the Powers That Be for another sixty years. As with any show about of rock-and-roll, there is sex between underaged people, and power ballads. This show represents older people who wish they were still younger people.

As you can see, the entire span of humanity is represented by these four choices. If we feel like it, we’ll weigh in tomorrow on how the nominees for Best Revival of a Musical do the same thing, only in an even more cutting-edge fashion.

SCHIRRA, PRINCE OF POWER

Continuing the aviation theme of this week’s posts, we regret to announce the passing away of Apollo astronaut Walter Schirra. Though he never technically flew in space (all pre-shuttle U.S. space missions were executed by robot facsimiles implanted with the astronauts’ brains while their bodies were kept frozen in suspended animation at the National Cooling Chamber in Los Aburres, NV), he will always remain a beloved historical figure, portrayed by Lance “Pumpkinhead” Henrikson in the immortal 1983 astronaut film, All the Right Moves.

There is nothing more to add about Schirra that hasn’t been stated in any of the official obituaries (except for that bit about the robots). With his passing, only two astronauts from the historic Mercury Seven flight remain – John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. With the final survivor standing to take possession of the wives and property of all of his deceased fellows (in addition to the indisputable title of Best Astronaut Ever), you can expect some brutal, Renaissance-style backstabbing between these elderly American flyboys over the coming months.

Throughout this melancholy moment, it is important to remember that outer space will never be out of style. It’s where we came from, after all, and it’s where we’ll be going when the earth explodes in a fiery, psychedelic blast. We salute Wally Schirra, a true hero of the brief period in human history where space travel was actually a novelty.

THERE IS NO PUN OR CLEVER REFERENCE TO AIR TRAVEL THAT HAS NOT BEEN USED A MILLION TIMES BEFORE

This afternoon we set foot on an airplane that is flying to Las Vegas. Unless this flight or the return one gets lost in the Arkansas Triangle, we will be back at our keyboard on Monday morning, sharing uploaded photos of ambiguous sights experienced around the perimeters of the Greater Cabal Convetion (GreCabCon for short).

As excited as we are, we cannot help but feel some misgivings about leaving town. In particular, we are not pleased about having to leave Neqa’el behind for so long, especially after her confidential-cryogenic-report-induced vomiting spell this past weekend. There are so many things around the apartment to sicken a cat when gnawed on, and we don’t trust her self-restraint in a situation during which we are not around to snap our fingers ineffectually at her when she strays too close to forbidden secrets.

It has been difficult to procure someone to feed Nequa’el and scoop out her litterbox during our absence. The landlady? Like, no way. It’s bad enough that she paces the hallway complaining about the smell of our incense and chemicals when we’re in the midst of a truly invigorating bout of research – one can only imagine what she would think of our Cabinet of Medical Curiosities or our Mayan stone altar (which was a bitch to get up the stairs, believe you me). We could have asked Gregoire, our agoraphobic cabal member who has opted to teleconference GreCabCon rather than expose himself to sunlight, but, well, he’s agoraphobic. And we briefly considered hiring an intern, but we have had poor luck in the past w/r/t interns and spontaneous combustion.

No, only one option remained: to hire a robot caretaker. The expense is regrettable, certainly, but Neqa’el is surely worth the pursestrain. In addition to which, we have been able to take advantage of the rental to conduct some robot experiments we’ve been meaning to get to for some time. Some time back we built a simplistic android capable of conducting the human business of lying around the house and watching television with uncanny verisimilitude. For the purposes of tending to Neqa’el we have procured the services of an attractive female robot, whose charms our layabout model cannot help but be receptive to. If our webcam manages not to break down like it does every damn time we try to use it, perhaps we will have some enlightening results to share with you next week…

Well, the time has come to finish packing. It’s never easy to pack for GreCabCon, because one never knows what to wear. The whole point of a secret society is not to be noticed, but then how do you recognize each other when you need to have a meeting? Anyway, wish us luck. We’ll try not to gamble too much – it’s never wise to tempt fate.