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tony awards

Watch ’em every year. Last night’s broadcast was just kinda eh. Strange-ish. Forced, strained. Maybe it was me.

Whoopi Goldberg hosted and kept popping up in these Billy Crystal-like clips, inserting herself into various scenes from various musicals. These were obviously pre-filmed and played whenever the show was going to commercial. Weird, they were weird. Didn’t work for me. Here’s Whoopi as Christine in Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom is saying, “Sing! Sing for me, my angel of music!” and Christine’s supposed to start her big, “Ahhhhh-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-AHHHHHHH!” etc., but Whoopi merely sings “Toe-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-NNNNNY!” til she collapses.

Uhm, okay.

Later, here she is as Whoopi Poppins floating in with her umbrella and having problems flying.

Later, she’s The Lady of the Lake from Spamalot. She enters in full suit of armor, takes the helmet off and says, “Tony.”

Right.

That was the running “gag.” She’d insert herself into a famous show and say or sing “Tony.”

Even later, in a rendition of “One” from A Chorus Line, all the dancers are Whoopi.

Funny.

I love Whoopi Goldberg, generally, but she rarely even appeared LIVE onstage last night. The whole evening had a strange, disjointed vibe to me. Just weird.

The high point for me was a completely nonsensical acceptance speech by Mark Rylance, winner of Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for Boeing Boeing. I have not the slightest inkling what it meant. Judging from the bemused and smiling faces in the audience, no one else did either. He was completely dead pan, straight-faced, with a kind of younger Charles Grodin air about him. Here’s his acceptance speech in its entirety:

When you’re in town wearing some kind of a uniform is helpful. Policeman, priest, etc. Driving a tank is very impressive or a car with official lettering on the side. If that isn’t to your taste, you could join the revolution, wear an armband, carry a home-made flag tied to a broom handle or placard bearing an incendiary slogan. At the very least, you should wear a suit and carry a briefcase and a cellphone. Or a team jacket, a baseball cap, and a cell phone. If you’re in the woods, the back country, some place far from any human habitation, it is a good idea to wear orange…and carry a gun and, or depending on the season, a fishing pole or a camera with a big lens. Otherwise…I will wrap it up now very quickly…otherwise it might appear that you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re just wandering the earth, no particular reason for being here, no particular place to go. Thanks very much for this.

Everybody laughed like crazy and nobody had a clue why. Hahahaha.

Oh, and Alec Baldwin? You’re not supposed to say the name “M-a-c-B-e-t-h”! Has nobody told you, man? You’re in timeout.

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7 favorite movie cries — men

Today, I made of list of 7 of my Favorite Movie Cries — Men. Meaning, scenes where actors cry, really make me believe it, completely break my heart, and are still gorgeous manly men. Scenes that blaze on in my heart because they are real and impactful, not maudlin or forced. Scenes that make me believe I’m watching a man in a moment that is totally private and totally real. Even though some of these moments involve the man being with other people, they are moments where I feel I’m watching something personal and uncontrollable spill OUT, something they might rather keep inside, have no one see, but the moment is bigger than they are; the moment is just beyond them. I don’t feel any of these is a false or contrived moment in the least. Each of them is so beautiful to me. And perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but I’m someone who believes that crying is different for men than women. I think it comes less easily and is less welcome to a man. That’s why it’s so moving to me; it’s more of a rarity. Women can do all kinds of things with their tears. Use them in ways that men just don’t. When I see tears from a man — in real life or done believably on film — I am frozen dead in my tracks. My heart just breaks. Because, yes, I think they are rare, generally, and more meaningful because of it.

I made this list quickly and off the top, so in no particular order because I simply cannot rank them:

1. Jimmy Stewart, It’s A Wonderful Life — The I want to live again scene. Please. I just want to hold him.

2. Liam Neeson, Schindler’s List — The I didn’t do enough scene. Please. I can barely breathe thinking about this one. His face. His face.

3. Anthony Hopkins, Shadowlands — The I sure would like to see her again scene. You know, where he’s with his stepson, Douglas, and they both burst into sobs after Joy has died? It sticks with you forever.

4. Denzel Washington, Glory — The whipping scene. With the single tear streaking down his proud defiant face.

5. Jeff Bridges, Fearless — The I’m alive scene at the end. After Isabella Rossellini has done what he’s asked and saved him.

6. Ewan MacGregor, Moulin Rouge — After Satine has died. My Lord. So unbearably sad.

7. Clark Gable, Gone With The Wind — After Scarlett’s miscarriage. The cry that Gable didn’t want to do, almost quit the picture over. Well, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant forever. Man. It simply kills me.

I dare anyone to watch any of these scenes and not be moved or even changed somehow.

Short and sweet. Feel free to weigh in with your own, peeps.

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i dreamed a dream

As I think I’ve said before, I don’t very often remember my dreams when I awake. My Beloved, however, remembers all of his in minute detail and they all seem to be soaring epic tales of only-God-knows-what. I say this because I’m a bad wife and because, *sometimes, when he starts to tell me a dream he had — *sometimes — I cover my ears and say, “OH LORD!! IT BURRRNS!!” and other such supportive stuff to encourage him to please continue which he always does. He just talks louder; doesn’t seem to get the hint. He’s a very vexing person, you know.

But back to me. So, yeah, I don’t remember my dreams often. When I do, it’s usually because it’s one of my recurring theme dreams. And, frankly, there is only one recurring theme — which I will tell you but not before I warn you that this is likely to be the most embarrassing admission in the history of this blog. Beet-red embarrassing for me and, very possibly, the same for you. You may be irreparably embarrassed for me. You may think less of me forever. (How is that possible, Trace, you say? Oh, it be possible. It be. Brace yourselves.)

So … I will tell you the recurring theme by sharing how my dream discussions with MB always go down:

ME: So I had a dream last night.
HE (sighing): Okay. Who wanted you?
ME: (Uhm, insert name of famous person here.)

Yep. That’s my recurring theme dream. Sally from When Harry Met Sally varied her outfits in her recurring dream; I vary the celebrity who breathlessly declares he wants me. And that is the entire dream. That is the entire discussion of the dream. Nothing really happens in the dream except this: a random celebrity ardently declares his love and desire for me.

For instance, here’s a recent one:

ME: So I had a dream last night.
HE: (sighing): Okay. Who wanted you?
ME: Simon Cowell.

Simon Cowell? Simon Cowell?? He of the freakishly small hands?? Lord. I have issues. Deep, unfathomable issues. I am in a full-body cringe right now. You may feel similarly. And I do apologize.

Oh, and the randomness of it all cannot be overstated. These are not men I spend time mooning over, no matter how attractive they may be. They are not men I just saw in a movie or TV show that day who might be hovering in my subconscious. They just ….. appear. Out of nowhere. It’s like there’s some cosmic celebrity lineup for Tracey’s Recurring Theme Dream and every male celebrity is eventually gonna have to make an appearance, like it or not. They have to show up and hit their marks and make me believe it, dammit!

And MB always takes it in stride. He only berates me when he thinks the celebrity is sub-par. THAT will be his issue. Usually, he just sighs and laughs because he’s good-natured and secure and, amazingly, still loves me in spite of all of this. Bless you, man!

But this morning — this morning — was slightly different. I remembered two dreams. The discussion went like this:

ME: I had two dreams.
HE: Really?
ME: Uh-huh. In the first dream, I killed someone.
HE: Really? How?
ME: I stabbed him. I feel bad.
HE: Hm.
ME: And then the second dream …
HE: Yeah — who wanted you?
ME: Sawyer from Lost.
HE: Good one.
ME: Yeah. (pause) But I don’t deserve to have Sawyer want me — I killed someone!

I just …. don’t know what to say.

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* all the time

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dad, on the rocks

I was on the phone with my dad, chatting about this and that, and next thing I knew, we were talking about his rock balancing.

Oh, yeah. Dad knows how to balance rocks.

You know, like this:

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(This is from the UK — not my dad’s work, but similar.)

For his work, my dad balances the fairly large rocks in my parents’ rather forested front yard. He balances rocks around their waterfall. He balances rocks around the pool. Anywhere. Everywhere. And I mean everywhere. He’s balanced rocks in Canada and Europe while on choir tours. You know, spreading the joy of the Lord and working rock miracles. That, especially, gives him a kick. Hee hee. What will these Germans think when they come home and see these rocks balanced in their yard? Hee hee. So Dad’s an art vandal basically. I trespass on your property for a larger mystical purpose. Haha. He’s been casually doing this off and on for several years now.

I remember the first time I saw Dad’s rock balancing. I was driving to my parents’ for a visit, pulling into the long driveway, and suddenly, there were mysterious rock shrines everywhere, rising out of nowhere. Small stone sentinels lining the drive. I was gobsmacked. Am I in Middle Earth? Did Hobbits do this? Nope. Just dad. Doing stuff. And they weren’t simply stacked. Oh, no. They were improbably, impossibly balanced, tip to tip. I almost drove off the road from staring, openmouthed; it was so incredible, so completely out of the blue. For a fleeting moment, I lost all sense of where I even was. I was in some kind of fantasy. Some science fiction, right? Somehow, I’d driven through a porthole into an alternate universe with a freaky gravity-defying landscape.

When asked about it, Dad was typically nonchalant:

“I dunno. I just figured out how to do it.”

“Dad, that’s pretty amazing.”

“Well. It’s fun.”

Yo dee doh. No big deal.

Of course, the grandkids went nuts. The boys, especially. “WOW! Pop-pop did THAT?? We want to do it too!!” Turns out, little boys don’t have the mental focus and patience to be a zen rock master. In the end, they were sidelined, left only with little piles of unruly rocks and bug-eyed admiration of their Pop-pop’s prowess.

So when our recent conversation turned to rock balancing, I had to finally ask him, “Dad, how did you ever start doing that?”

See, you can never ask Dad what animates him at the time. He’ll hedge. He’ll be mysterious. He might not know yet. Ask him later; then he’ll tell you. He needs time to figure out why he does stuff. Sometimes he never knows.

“Well, I saw a big display of balanced rocks down at The Embarcadero years ago. There was a sign there that said this guy was one of 5 in the world who could do it. So I thought I would try it. It worked out okay. I guess I’m the 6th.”

I laughed.

“It’s just physics,” he said.

I laughed again. “How come you don’t do it much anymore?”

“Oh. Well. Because I’ve mastered it, I guess.”

I could hear the simple shrug in his voice. He’s just that way. We said goodbye moments later and I had to smile, thinking about Dad and his rocks.

Yes, you’ve mastered it, Dad. You’re the 6th.

You’re much more than the 6th.

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“into the woods” disappeared — wha??

Okay. Sheesh. Somehow my “Into the Woods” post got clicked over to “Private” — which means I can see it but you can’t. I have no idea how this happened. Really. I DIDN’T CLICK IT — I SWEAR! Why make that one “Private”? That’s retarded. I have no idea now it happened and my apologies. It’s there now again. Or it better be. Tell me if you can’t see it!

Took me long enough to figure it out. How embarrassing.

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“into the woods” — the movie?

Doing some researching/reading about Stephen Sondheim and I discovered something I’d never known before: His musical of fractured fairy tales, Into the Woods, was slated to be made into a film in the mid-90s. Uhm, seriously?? Damn. I would have loved to have seen that! I almost wish I didn’t know this because the fact that it never happened is now instantly and forever a bummer to me. Ignorance IS bliss. I became familiar with the show in the early 90s through repeated watchings of a copied videotape of this version — featuring the Broadway cast. I watched it repeatedly until the tape wore out. Or got stuck in the player and ruined. Or some other sad end to it all.

Anyhoo.

Seems in about October 1994, a reading of the script was held at the home of director Penny Marshall. Oh, and this is where I will list the cast that was in place at the time and then yea or nay these choices for this movie that never got made. Which makes total sense to me.

So let’s proceed apace with my totally moot, irrelevant approval or disapproval of the casting for a never-made movie circa 1995:

Robin Williams as The Baker — Uhm, I say …. nay on this casting. I say nay to Robin Williams in general. I’m trying to think whom I’d prefer. How ’bout Billy Crystal instead? Yup. That’s better. Less frenetic. Less spastic. Less hairy.

Goldie Hawn as The Baker’s Wife — Yes. I like it.

Cher as The Witch — Played on Broadway by Bernadette Peters. I can’t decide if Cher in this role is a disastrous or brilliant idea. I think I say yes.

Steve Martin as The Wolf — Hahahahaha! I love The Wolf. In his big number, “Hello, Little Girl,” he spends the entire song leering and basically orgasmic about the possibility of devouring Little Red Riding Hood and her bony, crunchy grandma. Steve Martin could have been hilarious. Genius, even. Now that I think about it, the fact that I will never see him in this role makes the bummer even bigger. Leaps and bounds bigger.

Danny DeVito as The Giant — So joke casting, right? Um, okay. The giant is supposed to be a woman — she’s the widow of the giant killed by Jack — but done right, it could have been funny. Uh, I guess?

Elijah Wood as Jack — Perfect, I think, for empty-headed Jack.

Roseanne as Jack’s Mother — Played on Broadway by Barbara Byrne, a woman with a wonderfully ditzy, offhand, vacant way about her — you might remember her as Constanze’s mother in Amadeus, but Roseanne in this role might have been great. A completely different energy — the loud-mouthed brassy broad as Jack’s Mother.

Bebe Neuwirth as Cinderella’s Stepmother — I love Bebe Neuwirth, so yes.

Mayim Bialik as Little Red Riding Hood — Of Beaches and Blossom fame. Uhm, hm. Would she have been too precious and “spunky”? Eck. Danielle Ferland, the original Red, was part Shirley Temple, part total bully, and a complete riot. Bialik always seemed too packaged to me somehow. I say no. Put Danielle in there.

Samantha Mathis as Rapunzel — Older “Amy” from Little Women? Well, she was high-maintenance back then and Rapunzel is a screaming sobbing nutjob, so okay. I can see it.

Brendan Fraser as Rapunzel’s Prince — Oh, Sweet Lord, YES! As the prince who sings to his prince brother about how impossible it is to love Rapunzel? “AGONY! Much more painful than yours/When you know she would go with you/If there only were doors/” Yes, a thousand times. He’d be perfect.

Moira Kelly as Cinderella — Yes. She’s from The Cutting Edge, right? That completely cheesy guilty-pleasure ice skating movie? I say yes on this one, too. Cinderella is more independent, more savvy, less insane than Rapunzel. Which makes sense if you think about it — given their circumstances.

Kyle MacLachlan as Cinderella’s Prince — Lord, YES! Brendan Fraser and Kyle MacLachlan singing “Agony”?? Please. Heaven. I am so so bummed that this movie didn’t get made.

Wah.

Wah.

Uhm.

Okey-dokey. Well. This is probably the most bizarre, non-sequitur post I’ve done — in, well, really not that long, actually. And with me drunk again, no less. Does anybody else have any thoughts about it? Yes, I do realize that we are discussing a non-existent movie from 13 years ago. It could even seem insane on the surface. But dig deeper, my friend, to the sane and shining core. You’ll see. Plus, I love discussing casting stuff — about anything. Real or imagined. Obviously.

Anything? Anybody?

“Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I seeeeee?”

Go to bed, Trace. Lord.

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lotta love

For Scandinavian designer Lotta Jansdotter, that is. She’s been on my radar for a while now and I love her fresh, spare, natural designs. Beautiful simplicity.

I’m currently hankering for these:

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And this makes me want to wear an apron all the time — look at the cute crossover back:
lottaapron.JPG

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r.i.p. jim mckay

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Oh, so sad. The face and voice of ABC’s The Wide World of Sports and so many Olympic Games is gone. I grew up on him. Loved him. Counted on him. His face and voice are part of the film reel of my childhood. In my house, we’d all gather around the TV on Saturday afternoons without fail to watch “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” Just the sight of him was simultaneously thrilling and reassuring to me. And when the Olympics rolled around, well, it wasn’t the Olympics to me without Jim McKay. He seemed enthusiastic about everything. A fan. And if he wasn’t a fan, he was willing to become one. He just had that kind of open vibe about him. What’s more, he knew how to woo you to become a fan of something you’d never cared two hoots about before. I mean, the man could make you care about cliff diving in Acapulco, for Christ’s sake. He just had a gift that reached out — broke beyond the bonds of the TV — a kind of everyman accessibility and warmth that you instantly liked and trusted. Jim McKay was, quite simply, the face and voice of the sporting events that mattered most to me, the ones that got my blood pumping. He never made it about himself, didn’t have a drop of Howard Cosell’s bombast running in his blood. No. He was unassumingly smart and eloquent, and perhaps precisely for that reason, the man was everywhere. If a sporting event was breaking out somewhere, Jim McKay was there and you wanted him to be there. He was so good, but he was quietly good. He won an Emmy for his live coverage of the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972 — Roone Arledge fed updates of the unfolding events into McKay’s earpiece — and once it was clear that the rescue attempt had been completely botched and all the hostages had been killed, McKay came on the air and memorably told the world:

When I was a kid my father used to say our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They have now said there were eleven hostages; two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.

A class act, in a world where class acts are fewer and farther between. A man who knew how to set the right tone, match the mood of the viewer, whether it be pounding anticipation or incomprehensible sorrow. A true, gentle, and humane professional. I will miss him. A lot.

Thank you, Jim McKay, for the gentleman you always were and for the indelible impression you’ve left in the minds and hearts of a generation of sports lovers.

Rest in peace.

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work in progress

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Some small details still to add. And a change I’m thinking of but MB says don’t do it. I’ll post it again when it’s completely finished and we’ll see if I listened. Haha.

Oh, and her hair wasn’t going to be white, but now I kind of like it.