comments

1. Sheila Ryan on October 21st, 2006 at 5:31 pm

   I reckon there’s no getting around the fact that Vaudeville. Is. Dead.

   “New vaudeville” — such as various folks have promoted off and on over the past forty years at least — is really nothing more than a marketing label.

   Still, I can’t help believing in (or hoping for) its resurrection. It’s what I had in mind last summer when I submitted a comment in response to one of Aaron Winslow’s pineapple posts.

   I would love to see a vaudevillian revue featuring Aaron and Deron performing routines in the manner of some of John Berryman’s poems — or just performing the poems outright.

   And here’s another of my visions: every now and again J and I hash over mounting a Shakespeare festival and staging productions featuring trick shooting (a la Annie Oakley). We invariably come to a stalemate when J sticks to his vision of integrating the trick shooting into the action of the play and I hold out for stopping the action for vignettes in the manner of vaudevillian ‘olios’ — featuring trick shooting.

2. Andrew Simone on October 21st, 2006 at 5:38 pm

   I have come to the conclusion, after reading the pineapple post, that you people are too clever for your own good.

3. Andrew Simone on October 21st, 2006 at 5:39 pm

   Oh, and I would totally go to that Shakespeare festival…and this is coming from a purist.

4. Sheila Ryan on October 21st, 2006 at 5:45 pm

   I’m coming to the conclusion that if one is clever, one is always too clever for one’s own good.

   But I’ll send you an invite if we ever get the Shakespeare festival underway. Too bad I’m on the verge of selling three and a half acres in a part of the world where ‘shots fired’ don’t ruffle nobody nohow.

5. Andrew Simone on October 21st, 2006 at 6:02 pm

   That land your selling reminds me of a story that might be worth writing down sometime.

   I have a crazy family, I am particularly thinking of my step-half aunt who, because my father’s booze-impaired judgment, was given the family .375 magnum one 4th of July.

   She, too, was drunk.

   Let’s just say that we were all very lucky nobody (read: ‘me’) did not die and that cops didn’t come.

   To this day, I find it immensely amusing that this all took place in northern NJ rather than, say, Kentucky (which is a fine state with fine people!).

   I honestly have no idea why I wrote this.

6. Sheila Ryan on October 21st, 2006 at 6:33 pm

   In my experience (which is not altogether unlike yours — though situated in what I shake my head and call ‘adulthood’), so long as nobody calls the cops, there’s a chance things will turn out all right.

   Once the cops are on the scene, everything changes.

   Anyway . . . in my household(s) we do our best to practice gun safety and hope that you do the same in yours.

   And whether we can make a vaudeville sketch out of it remains to be seen.