Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Author Archives: kayewer

• 10,000 Phantoms

  Posted at 1:07 am by kayewer, on February 20, 2012

  Congratulations to Phantom of the Opera for celebrating 10,000 performances on Broadway.  I had the privilege of seeing my first performance just months ago; I really don’t know why I waited for the chance to see this timeless production, but now that I’ve sat in the front row of the Paris Opera House. . . .I mean New York’s Majestic Theatre, I won’t let it be my last.  The current cast is a perfectly matched family of performers who bring magic to the stage eight times a week, including Hugh Panaro (the current Phantom) in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stunning concept.

  If you aren’t familiar with it, the stage musical is based on a classic story by Gaston Leroux about a facially disfigured man of immeasurable musical talent, who lives in seclusion inside the opera house, making his presence known when business does not go according to his specifications.  New owners take over the business and, after a rehearsal goes awry (possibly at the Phantom’s hands), the prima donna quits and a beautifully voiced chorus girl is introduced as her replacement.  Christine Daae is being vocally trained by the Phantom, who desires her but stays in the shadows until, after her triumphant debut, he appears to her in person, hiding his face behind a mask.  When the opera’s new patron turns out to be Christine’s childhood friend, their friendship of years ago becomes love, and the Phantom’s rejection turns the love triangle into a challenge which can only end in mayhem and death.

  The most famous moment in the show is the climax of the first act, when the opera house’s magnificent chandelier is sent crashing to the stage by the Phantom.  My seat in the front row was within touching distance of the chandelier, which begins the story in pieces onstage and rises to the ceiling to become the reborn centerpiece of the experience, transforming the Majestic and us into the Paris Opera and its audience.  The musical numbers, the spectacle, and the tragedy combine into a mesmerizing experience that looks as fresh as when it first debuted in London in 1986.

  It’s always a pleasure to applaud a production like this.  I’d recommend the show to anybody who likes a good love story, a good cry or a good way to see what a Broadway show is like.  I have embraced the Music of the Night, and so should you.

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• The Problem With Computers

  Posted at 12:46 am by kayewer, on February 13, 2012

  I posted here yesterday, but my computer didn’t know it.  I was out and about, but had a chance to write earlier in the day than usual, so I wrote about my pending Saturday activities, and it was ready to go.  I hit the “Post” button, but nothing happened.

  Oh-oh, sounds like the computer might be sick.

  I don’t care if the computer in question is a Mac or PC, there is nothing like the threat of a computer crash to put despair into the hearts of men.  Fifty years ago the equivalent might have been watching an errant bulldozer on fire plowing toward your home and all your precious belongings doomed to become irreplacable rubble.

  It’s bad enough when a PC starts booting up slowly, or decides to run an update when you have to power down and pack it up.  It’s always frustrating to write through pages of inspired prose, only to find it impossible to save or store, or that you’ve put off your automatic update for ten minutes, the ten minutes are up and your machine shuts down.

  I don’t know what happened to the stuff I wrote.  It must have vanished like those gems of ideas I get at three in the morning that translate into garbage in the morning because I wrote them down in the dark while half asleep.

  My intentions were good.  The computer was bad.  But I’m here now, and I think this rant will be a go.  It’ll never replace yesterday’s, but I always promised myself that I would never look back on writing that never got anywhere.

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• I Can’t Contain Myself

  Posted at 1:26 am by kayewer, on February 5, 2012

  Supermarkets have aisles full of interesting products, but most come in cans, boxes, bags or packages.  Most of the packaging we take for granted has been around for ages, but if you want an experience in terror, go to the dairy aisle and look at the varieties of yogurt on the shelves.  The first challenge of any visitor to the yogurt aisle is to manoever a cleverly constructed calamity of containers vying for attention and a wad of your hard-earned bills.

  In the good old days, yogurt came in a cup with a narrower bottom and slightly wider top.  Now they come in a longer, inverted version like Yoplait’s, with a topple-proof wide bottom and narrow top that allows a spoon to go in but less product to safely come out.  They stack nicely on the shelf, like nursery blocks waiting for a two-year-old to whack them playfully.  The yogurt is wonderful, and the flavors a palace of delights for the palate, but the reward of eating it is off-balanced by the effort it takes to navigate the strange architecture of the cup.

  Dannon, on the other hand, replaced the ordinary boring cups about a year ago and substituted a round-edged rectangular opaque plastic container, surrounded by the label like a sheath and topped with a peelable foil lid.  These also stack well on the shelf, like rows of little bricks.  It’s also good yogurt, with enjoyable standards and seasonable flavors like Harvest Pear (with real pear chunks inside) that make such a singular lunch worthwhile.  The contents are visible on the bottom, but a strange star-like pattern radiates from the middle of the bottom from the inside.  It’s easier to use a spoon, but scraping around those ridges in the bottom is futile.  The corners are still not friendly to the average spoon.

  For true container enjoyment, Chobani puts their greek yogurt in a simple small bowl.  Easy to access, stir and enjoy.  The spoon can move freely inside and scoop out every last morsel of blood orange, pomegranate or passion fruit.  Pricier than the others, and takes up more room on the shelf, but definitely a winner.

  Whoever designs containers has to be somebody who rarely navigates the fridge at home.They’re probably under pressure to design some strange container, and they have chronic irregularity under the stress.  Which is why they should eat more yogurt and get a better understanding of the container.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged chobani, dannon, yogurt containers, yoplait

• Our Town As Seen in an Ice Cream Dish

  Posted at 2:42 am by kayewer, on January 29, 2012

  The town municipal calendar arrived today.  Inside were pieces of nostalgia from the good old days, including some images from an old ice cream parlor which has long been out of business.  A restaurant and bar has put on its facade and made a few cosmetic changes, but I have never set foot inside.  I wouldn’t like what they had done to the place.

  Back when it was the hangout for everybody between eight and 80, the owners made everything on site.  They had real ice cream, served in abundance in glass dishes, topped with real whipped cream and a huge cherry on top.  There was a basket of pretzel sticks at every table, and a jukebox from which many kids were first exposed to popular music or even the hits of their parents’ generation.

  They delivered their own milk to local households, and you could actually have food put on your doorstep without worry back then.

  Today ice cream contains strangely named concoctions and comes in cardboard containers from massive processing plants.  The good old parlor is going away like drive-in movies and even one-screen movie theatres.

  Sure I still eat ice cream and have a particular fancy for Blue Bunny, now that Baskin-Robbins is not to be found anywhere nearby (they have the best chocolate chip).  Nothing will replace that old joint that is nothing more now than a nostalgia photo in a town calendar.

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• The US Tower of Babel

  Posted at 12:52 am by kayewer, on January 22, 2012

  There is something to be said for the idea of requiring passable skills in a language by persons from outside its native spoken country who choose to live there.  Sure it’s not a bad thing for people who speak a language other than the local tongue to congregate and share their stories comfortably without pausing to translate, and our nation grew with “Little This Country” or enclaves of that dialect.  Heck, in London–if you believe Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady–the language changes from one block to the next.  I’ve never been able to figure out who in the Philadelphia area tends to call a crowd of other people “youse” and who uses the term “yis” (as in “all ‘a yis”), but on any public street today there is such a mixture of languages, it’s amazing anybody can understand anything.

  The other day a piece of mail came to our office, addressed to somebody with an oriental-sounding name.  The recipient in question isn’t oriental, nor is married to one, but the writer was obviously not aware of Anglican surnames.  Some mistakes that result in shoring up the language barrier are forgivable, but others are costly and cannot be ignored.

  The impression in the media is that non-native speakers tend to be more wary of authorities than the very criminals the police and investigators are trying to root out for the public’s safety.  Maybe the criminals speak their language, while the cops do not.

  What is most disturbing is the occasional television interview in which a speaker with residency in this country for some time utilises a translator to talk to the reporter.  Let’s say a car was coming their way and was doomed to run them down:  would the subject of the interview respond to the words, “Look out!” in time to save their own lives?  In the time it would take for the translator to put the warning into the proper words, they’d be goners.

  It seems logical that nobody can speak every language there is in the world, but most people can obtain enough ability in a second language with proper attention and study.  Children are particularly open to learning additional languages, and they are often employed to translate in the home for the older adults who lack aptitude.  For those who refuse to adapt, it is a sad and isolating trend that ultimately causes that language barrier to become an unbreakable block to true freedom.  It isn’t discriminatory to establish and require one language, but it is dangerous for people to have voices that nobody can understand.

  Language is power.

   

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• What Da Cup?

  Posted at 2:38 am by kayewer, on January 15, 2012

  I guess I lead a more sheltered life than I thought, because I just got freaked out by a new video by Toby Keith which pays homage to a particular variety of plastic drinking vessel.  The last time I was impressed by a video, I forgot its title and who sang it a week later.

  Not being much of a country music fan, it took a moment for it to sink in that what I was watching wasn’t my usual cup of tea (excuse the pun), but I didn’t realize how popular Solo cups were until today.  Sure those ubitquitous cups are inexpensive, disposable and fun, and even I have tried my hand at cup stacking (and I don’t recommend trying it with cups with comfort grip sides, because it slows you down), but who would think that one could write a whole song about them?  Who knew that they apparently decompose in 14 years?  Who would go to all the trouble to find out?  Toby Keith did.  Thank you.

  What part freaked me out?  A partygoer urinating into a cup and passing it on to somebody else when beer was also making the rounds.  Ew.  There is something strange about the fact that beer and urine look so much alike.  Somebody up there has a sense of humor. I hope the Solo company does, too.

  So now I’ll spend the rest of my day singing about red Solo cups, which I’ll lift up and party.  Ask me again in a week if I still remember that Toby Keith did it, and you’ll know if you have a winner.

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• Introducing the 40-Hour Workweek

  Posted at 12:55 am by kayewer, on January 9, 2012

  With a new year one often receives new responsibilities.  Our office decided to institute a forty-hour week.  We used to work 2 1/2 hours fewer, not counting times when lunch was cut short or the managers asked for overtime; then it was easy to do 40 hours a week or more if desired.

  Once the change was approved, the question became how to add the extra time on to everybody’s already packed schedule without affecting the other two thirds of their lives.  It’s amazing to look over the new schedules and see how adding 30 minutes a day to the work week can change people’s lifestyle dynamics.  For one thing, bad weather can affect travel time, so parents of school-age children had to consider whether it would be prudent to move around their mornings or evenings.

  Ultimately some folks asked for an earlier start, while others chose the “caboose.”  Somebody (I was one such somebody) had to read a sheet which contained the original proposed schedules and the changes made to meet the needs of the staff involved.  It took awhile to translate it, calculate it and enter it.  In the end, however, nobody seems to have complained about the new protocol, only that the new hours now meant less overtime.

  Some of us, unfortunately, had lunches reduced from 45 to 30 minutes.  With only 30 minutes, it’s a challenge to eat lunch, especially when the cafeteria needs time to prepare your food.  Add the actual consumption of the food, bathroom time and fielding cellphone calls which had to go unanswered on company time, and those 30 minutes disappear faster than a panicked cat.

  Some stomachs were growling the first week, but not loudly.

  The great thing about work is, when you work, you get paid.  The more time you work, the more you get paid.  The money goes into that cafeteria lunch, and if you don’t eat it all, you can take it home a half hour later than usual.

   

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• The Rest of the World: The Year in Review

  Posted at 2:26 am by kayewer, on January 1, 2012

  2011 was a year that had its standout moments.  Some of the most noteworthy events in 2011 involved people dying, like Kim Jong Il or Elizabeth Taylor.  Whether people are considered good or bad, the media takes time to reflect on who they were and why their lives mattered.  Of course all lives matter, but it’s only after death that one can be measured by what attention their passing receives.

  While despots and icons of the golden age of movies passed on, countries suffered economic crisis, war, and natural disaster.  It happens every year.  In 2012 we will likely see more of the same.  We survived blizzards, floods, extreme heat and nuclear power plant meltdowns.  We can survive more of the same, as long as we remember that history goes on, from one crisis to another, and we are just witnesses that pass on what we see before we, too, stand up to the tape measure of why our lives mattered.

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• The Tale of the Lemon Tree

  Posted at 2:20 am by kayewer, on December 25, 2011

  One summer afternoon awhile ago, I pulled from my lunch bag the wedge of lemon I cut daily to squeeze fresh juice into my cup of tea at work.  Inside the wedge, well hidden under a heavy protective mass of pulp and juice, was a seed which had sprouted.  The fruit I had picked at the supermarket was apparently of an age at which it could–and did–produce progeny unbeknownst to its grower.

  Just for fun, I stuck the seed in some water, and within days it had grown enough that I was able to put it into some soil.  Unfortunately it died.

  Weeks and a few lemons later, another sprouted seed appeared.  I worried that I might not have planted the first one properly (it’s possible I buried it upside down, as I was unable to tell which part was the actual root of the thing), so I left this seed in water awhile longer, and soon I saw evidence of its sense of direction and proudly potted it, placing it on the generous windowsill facing the warm sun outside the office window.

  The seed grew quickly, and over the past few years I’ve had to re-pot it four times.  It is now a grand plant about four feet high.  It now needs a table, rather than a windowsill, but it is the pride of the office, and volunteers care for it when I’m away.

  The trouble is, what is the future of such a tree?

  I have read that lemon trees can be grown in containers if kept in the proper environment and cared for with good soil, drainage and misting (it needs the same type of climate as the one from which it came). 

  Everybody is waiting for the day when it grows a lemon.  We joke that we might get half a glass of lemonade and can pass it around if everybody sips a drop apiece.  Like anything in life, it’s a joy to have and watch, and it will certainly add to the office decor for a long time.

  It had better.  Not another sprout has appeared in my lemons since then.

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• Christmas I Miss

  Posted at 2:44 am by kayewer, on December 18, 2011

  Today I bought a can of Plantation brand chocolate straws.  In the good old days they were long, sweet sticks of candy wrapped around a filling of chocolate.  They’ve shrunken a bit since then, and are now more bite-size and melt faster on the tongue.  Still good, but not like it used to be.

  As the years go by, Christmas doesn’t seem to be the same.  Everything becomes new and improved, which usually means cheaper.  With the economy looking bad for awhile longer, maybe the best thing to do is remember what used to be, because maybe it could be that way again.

  I seem to remember that Cherry Hill Mall used to have a walk-through exhibit featuring an Eskimo boy.  I can’t remember his name or anything else about it, but it was fun when I was a kid, to walk along and watch the scenery unfold.  I think the kid went to Hawaii in one of the exhibits.

  I remember the year when the gas company Sinclair brought a dinosaur exhibit to Cherry Hill Mall’s parking lot.  They had a vending machine which produced models of dinosaurs out of molten plastic.  That was cool back in the good old days.

  I recall the annual television program from Hess’ Department Store in Allentown, PA.  They featured animatronic displays.  Today, kids probably wouldn’t appreciate animatronics:  video or holographic avatars catch their eyes these days.  Then again, the movie Hugo seems to be packing in audiences at the box office, and that movie features an animatronic figure.  Maybe all is not lost.

  I remember that the holiday season didn’t start until Santa entered the toy department on Thanksgiving Day.  Now, we start seeing processed holiday foods being sold in September, and the first holiday ornaments arrive in July.

  Back in the good old days, we had real ice cream parlors like the local hangout Green Valley.  I first discovered jukeboxes there.  The whipped topping was real, and the portions were massive.  Every table had a free basket of pretzel sticks.  The atmosphere was warm and the ice cream cold (and made from scratch).

  Also, back in the good old days, it was possible to say Merry Christmas to anybody without having to stop and think to oneself if anybody would take offense.  Greeting people meant good will to all men, whether they celebrated Christmas, Channukah, Kwanzaa or nothing at all.

  If we wanted it, we could get it back again.

   

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