Rip's Excellent Rock and Roll Adventure

My husband has an entire wall of sheet music surrounding his piano in our music room, a massive collection of classical, opera, standards, and show tunes. None of it, however, is rock and roll.

The closest my husband has gotten to a rock concert since we’ve been together was when he agreed to attend a ballet set to Bruce Springsteen music with me, and Joe Grushecky played during intermission. On the other hand, I VERY much like (that old time) rock and roll, particularly American rockers with folk influences, like Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and R.E.M.  I have been to a few –maybe 50 or so – rock concerts in my day.

When we went to Cleveland on vacation, we had to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My husband would a first-time visitor, but I had been there before. I knew it was a magical fun place, like Disney World, so I was optimistic that he would enjoy it. After all, I once attended a performance of Ariadne auf Naxos, an obscure and painful German opera for him, and I….. well, okay, “enjoy” would be a strong word, but I survived.

The first thing I did when we got there was make my husband pose for a picture in front of the building so I could prove to people that he was actually there. He panicked for a moment in line when he realized that he left his earplugs back at the bed and breakfast, but I assured him that he wouldn’t really need them – it wasn’t like an actual rock concert inside.

We started with the introductory History of Rock and Roll film and had a fine time exploring all the exhibits and paraphernalia from the featured musicians. Rock fan or not, you just have to appreciate some of this stuff – like the jacket Michael Jackson wore in his Thriller video. I mean, how cool is that? And I learned new things while I was there. I found out that country singer and American Idol winner Carrie Underwood is actually a rock artist when we visited the brand-new “Women Who Rock” exhibit.

I realized that my husband was getting into it when we entered a theater where they were showing clips of performances from the telecasts of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. When we entered, Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox (two of my favorites) were just finishing up a duet of Chain of Fools.  Annie was writhing and gyrating all over the stage while Aretha was looking at her like she was some kind of damn fool. I imagined that Aretha was thinking, “Child, I don’t have to work that hard, not with my voice.”

Then Metallica came on. Heavy metal is not my thing. I got up to leave. “Where are you going?” asked my husband.

“Do you really want to listen to heavy metal?” I asked.

“Right now, it’s less painful than my feet,” he said.

When the first song was done, I was again ready to leave, but then Lou Reed joined the band onstage. “Do you mind if we stay for this?” I asked.

“Why would I mind?” he asked.

“Well, because it’s Megadeath,” I explained.

“It’s Metallica,” he corrected.

“Whatever, they’re all the same,” I muttered.

“Oh, listen to you, being dismissive,” he said, with a smile.

When Ozzy Osbourne joined Metallica, or whoever they were, we were both ready to go.

We continued on our merry way. Suddenly my husband was talking like a convert. He didn’t want to miss anything in the place. It wasn’t the music itself he didn’t like, you see, it was just the volume and the crowds that put him off. He was pretty excited about the gift shop, where he passed on the t-shirt that read, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old,” opting instead for a (pardon the pun) rockin’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mug.

I’m glad he liked it, but I sure hope he doesn’t want to see Metallica the next time they come to Pittsburgh.

Nothing Wrong in Cleveland

My Friends are taking all kinds of exciting vacations this year. Disney World, the Outer Banks, and TWO went to or are headed for France.


We were actually all set on the idea of international travel ourselves this year. We were considering either a New England-Canada cruise or a trip to Toronto (a four-hour drive from our house). Unfortunately, because of some bizarre government plot to keep us from leaving the country (they now require birth certificates with parents’ names on them to issue passports) we were unable to get our passports in time for those glamorous trips. So, we settled on Cleveland as our vacation spot.

When you tell people from Pittsburgh that you are going to Cleveland for vacation, you might as well be telling them you are going to some far-off unfriendly foreign land, like Baghdad, for the reaction you get. This is all about –you guessed it- football. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns are bitter natural rivals, like lions and buffalo.

Look, it was an easy drive, okay? We wanted something close by and affordable. We have been VERY busy this summer and we didn’t want to work very hard just traveling to and from our vacation destination. Besides, Cleveland has a couple of non-sports-related world class attractions to recommend it.
One of those, the Cleveland Museum of Art, provided to be an ideal start to our vacation. My husband and I are perfect companions in an art museum, just as we are everywhere else. It is a serene and happy place for us. We like the same exhibits, spend the same amount of time with each piece of artwork, and walk quickly through the same exhibits. I was elated to discover an unfamiliar Monet painting that thoroughly captured my imagination. I left with a bookmark, magnet, key chain and 8 x 10 print of my new find, all of which cost me $17.49. This is MY version of “art collecting.”

We stayed at J. Palen House, a lovely and affordable bed and breakfast located in Cleveland’s historic Ohio City neighborhood. Our room boasted a comfortable King-sized bed (covered with more pillows than we knew what to do with), a roomy Jacuzzi, a rain forest shower head, and our own balcony so surrounded by foliage that you could almost forget you were on a city street. You can keep the beach – hanging out in a room like this is my idea of relaxing on vacation. Our hostess was gracious, and the breakfast freshly made and delicious.

Clevelanders are almost excessively friendly and cheerful, yet polite and savvy enough to say only nice things when we said we were from Pittsburgh, without as much as a grimace or sideways glance. If they weren’t sincere, you never would have known it. Only once did anyone mention the Steelers.

A two-hour Trolley Tour taught us many interesting facts about Cleveland, and you doubters should know that we learned that Cleveland is actually THE most awesome city in the whole world! We also learned that trolley seats are pretty uncomfortable after two hours, and that our tour guide had been an art teacher and a flight attendant before taking on this latest gig, and that she was not in the least bit happy about the way “The Avengers” filming in the city was affecting her tour route. I thought the most interesting factoid we learned was that city founder Moses Cleveland left the city about 90 days after landing there and NEVER CAME BACK. Maybe he was a Steelers fan.

I think my husband summed it up the best about a day into the vacation when he said, emphatically, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with Cleveland.” I will go a step further and say that Cleveland was actually an excellent vacation destination.

In retrospect, we probably should have just said that we were going to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the second world-class Cleveland  attraction) for vacation. Pittsburghers get that, and many think it’s the only reason that one would voluntarily go to Cleveland. And we DID visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that visit warrants its own blog. Tune in next week.

"Rip's Carousel" (Reinventing the Wheel)

Director Diane Paulus is reinterpreting Porgy and Bess, the 1945 Gershwin opera, in an upcoming Broadway theater production of the work that she plans to call The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.  If I understand it correctly, she is keeping most of the music but is shortening the piece and adapting it to make the characters more multi-dimensional and accessible to today’s audiences (in her opinion).  She is doing so with the full blessings of the estates of George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, and DuBose Heyward, who co-wrote the lyrics with Ira and was the author of the novel Porgy upon which the original opera was based. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/theater/porgy-and-bess-with-audra-mcdonald.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1
No big deal, right? Not only is it the prerogative of a director to interpret a work, isn’t updating and reinterpreting classic works (even sometimes opera) all the rage on Broadway? One has to imagine that when writing “Rent” that Jonathan Larsen veered much further from Puccini’s La Boheme than Paulus is straying from the original Porgy and Bess.

Ah, but the “purists,” including no less than Stephen Sondheim himself, have risen up to condemn Paulus, her interpretation, and her viewpoints. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/stephen-sondheim-takes-issue-with-plan-for-revamped-porgy-and-bess/?hpw  My first thought was "What does Sondheim care?" He has allowed several drastic reinterpretations of his own works (e.g. Sweeney Todd, Company) in recent years. Of course, he is entitled to his opinion, just as Paulus is entitled to hers.

I pretty much love everything the Gershwins ever wrote, and I am not familiar enough with Porgy and Bess in its entirety to have a personal opinion about whether the work needs to be reinterpreted. I can tell you that there are musicals that I would re-write in a heartbeat, given the chance.

Let’s examine Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein for just a second, shall we? I loathe the book of this show, and let me tell you why. (SPOILER ALERT- the rest of this blog reveals most of the plot of “Carousel.”)

Okay, so Carousel is about Billy Bigelow, a carnival worker, who takes up with sweet-young-thing Julie Jordan. He marries her, loses his job, beats her because he is frustrated that he is unemployed, gets her pregnant, and then dies while committing a burglary so that he can feed the family. A series of bad choices, if you ask me. Inexplicably, Billy is not sent straight to Hell when he dies, but instead spends 15 years in purgatory.

Then an angel sends him down to earth to redeem himself by helping his troubled 15-year-old daughter, Louise. He talks to her for a while, and THEN smacks her. Julie tells her daughter, and this is a quote: "Sometimes a hit is just like a kiss." This somehow turns Louise around, and Billy gets into heaven. It glorifies domestic violence, and that was never acceptable, even in the 40's when it was written. It literally makes my skin crawl.

It’s a shame really, because it has a nice subplot about Carrie, Julie’s quirky best friend, and Mr. Snow, the decent (if less glamorous) fisherman she marries, and some exceptionally beautiful songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose work I admire as much as I do the Gershwins. You’ll Never Walk Alone is a song I can sing by a character I could play (cousin Nettie), but I could never live with myself if I appeared in a production of Carousel as written.

This is why I would love to get my hands on Carousel. We could call it Rip’s Carousel. It wouldn’t take much to fix it. First things first, I would cut This Was a Real Nice Clambake, one of the most inane songs in all of musical theater history. “The vittles we et [sic] were good you bet.” Boy, they don’t write lyrics like that anymore. Thank goodness.

Then all I would have to change is the ending. Billy would return to earth and explain to his daughter that it is never okay for a man to hit a woman under any circumstances. He might even apologize for making her life so difficult. Julie would tell her that while she loved her father, his violent temper and abusive nature ruined her life and caused his early death, and that is why she, Louise, should never accept that kind of behavior in a man or in herself. Louise would have the guidance that would give her a fighting chance for a happy life, and Billy would go to heaven.

Then I…um, I mean Cousin Nettie…would return to the stage to lead the entire company in a rousing encore of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Honestly, Do You Really Want the Truth?

You know that old saying, “Honesty is the best policy?” Honestly? That's such a lie.


Let me be clear that I advocate honesty in personal interactions most of the time. Honest and ethical behavior is most important, absolutely paramount, in fact, in business dealings. Furthermore, I find myself attracted to relentlessly honest people. People who just say what’s actually on their minds can be refreshing. Since they are physiologically incapable of lying, you know you can always trust them.

However, not only is telling the truth not always the best policy, it is actually sometimes a very bad idea indeed.

Take children, for example. “Children are SO honest,” people will say, as though that were a good thing. Children are not ALWAYS honest, of course. They are absolutely guileless when making observations about adults. “Gee, Mister, you have a funny voice!” they will happily announce to a gentleman upon meeting him for the first time, or they will innocently ask you why the dress you’re wearing is so ugly. However, they will lie like adorable little rugs just the minute they sense that the truth might get them into hot water. They will lie about breaking the lamp, or pulling Matilda’s hair, or not finishing their homework. Children can get away with these sorts of thing because they’re so darn cute.

Adults don’t have that luxury- we expect more from them. Those of you who think that saying what’s on your mind is always the best idea are just lying to yourselves. Being tactful in a civilized society occasionally means bending the truth or even lying outright.

Rhetorical questions rarely require a detailed, honest answer. “Hi, there, how are you?” is usually just a greeting more than an actual question, especially when exchanged with a casual acquaintance in the supermarket. The proper answer here is, “Fine.” Almost no one really wants to hear a litany of your latest ailments.

Sometimes people think they want more information but they don’t. Once, my husband and I were paying after having a perfectly adequate dining experience at a local pancake restaurant. The upbeat young man at the cash register asked, “How was everything?”

“Fine,” answered my husband.

“Is that the best we can get from you – a ‘fine’?” cajoled the clerk.

“Oh, you actually want the details of how our visit was?” asked my husband, amiably. “Okay! We waited several minutes before someone even took our drink order, and they could have refilled the coffee more often, and they kept forgetting to bring us more cream when we asked for it. The food also took a while to come out, but was very good when we got it. So, all in all, it was fine.” I could tell from the look on the cashier’s face that, in the end, he didn’t really want the whole truth.

If you are a waitress, it is an especially bad idea to apologize to your customers for the bad service you’ve been giving them by truthfully explaining that you have been suffering from a terrible stomach flu and that you’ve been “puking your guts out” all morning. This is the epitome of TMI, and, believe it or not, might cause your customers to lose their appetites and complain to your manager. Who knows? They may even avoid you and your restaurant in the future.

When commenting on someone’s appearance, even in response to a direct question, a lie is often more of a kindness than it is a deceit. There is nothing to be gained by telling someone that you really don’t like their new outfit or haircut. If someone shares with you that they FEEL like hell, they almost never want to hear that they also LOOK like hell. And, men, trust me, when a woman asks you, “Do I look fat in this outfit?” she is looking for reassurance, not the truth.

There are occasional exceptions, of course. My husband once volunteered to me that if I ever asked him if my butt looked big in these pants, he would have to say yes, but that it would be a GOOD thing. Well, when he put it that way, it was honestly pretty charming.

"Your Destination Will Be on Your Right"

It was the quintessential dark and stormy night, about 20 years ago. I had attended a production of "The Odd Couple" at Linden Hall in Dawson, PA, which is located somewhere outside Perryopolis in Fayette County. It was my first time there.


I set out for home at about 11 p.m. in a torrential downpour on unfamiliar country roads. I missed an essential turn and was now lost on the country back roads of Fayette County. I drove for miles without seeing one business of any kind where I might stop and ask for directions. As I drove I realized that I was starting to get dangerously low on gas. Cell phones existed at the time but regular folks did not have them, so I had no way of contacting anyone about this predicament.

There was nothing to do but drive and pray. I am not the type of person who prays for favors frivolously. I do not pray for good weather or that I find shoes that match my clothes. In this instance, I prayed more intensely than I ever had before that I would find a familiar road or a gas station before I ran out of gas. After about 45 minutes, I happened upon a sign leading me to the nearest highway, got to a gas station in time, and headed for home. There is no way that I had enough gas in the car to get as far as I did that night, so I am convinced my prayers were answered (it was kind of like Hanukkah).

I’d like to pretend this was an unusual occurrence, but the truth is that I’m a bit directionally challenged. The first time I go anywhere, there is a decent chance I may miss a turn on the way. Heck, I once got lost on my first visit to a large Target store. Usually, I realize quickly what happened and just turn around to get back to where I was. It certainly doesn’t ruin my day or anything. If it did, I would spend a fair number of my days in a state of wild despair because I went a mile or two out of my way.

Once in a while, though, it all goes terribly wrong like it did all those years ago in Fayette County. Just a couple of days ago, I was trying a new, presumably simple back route to work. I am still not sure where I took the wrong turn, but I ended up in Economy, PA, where I am pretty sure I’ve never been before. Again, I was in the country, with no business establishment in sight.

However, the difference this time is that I now carry a phone with me that is not only portable, but also very intelligent. My android is a very smartphone, indeed. All I had to do to get myself back on track was to pull over and type my destination address into the navigation app. The phone took care of the rest. A soothing female voice talked me back to work, telling me exactly when and where to turn (“In 500 feet, you will turn left onto Mary Reed Road”). I wasn’t far from work, but without that GPS, I might still be looking for a gas station or convenience store in Economy, perhaps never to discover that my destination would be on my right.

Technology is grand, isn’t it? Say what you will about the dangers of using your cell phone while you’re driving. In certain cases, having that cell phone in the car can save you.