Multiple Personality

It’s probably not a secret, but I love the Internet. If for no other reason than its ability to gush information. I don’t consider myself a research freak, but there are those times when you want/need to know something. And I’m old enough to remember when one was at the mercy of the family encyclopedia or an impatient reference-desk librarian if one wanted to know something.

Now I can find my info almost as fast as I can say Yahoo — and also get the information interpreted (that means wrong) and/or delivered by a drag queen. Which is not to say that drag queens are necessarily wrong. Far from it, I’m sure.

I’ve been watching the whole first season of “Mad Men,” as is my wont of finding out about a cable series after it’s been deigned wonderful and then marathoning my way into cognition. Some of the music they play over the closing credits of this late-’50s-themed show is a wowser. I always liked Rosemary Clooney’s sassy Italian-y numbers, like “Mambo Italiano” and even “Come-on-a My House,” and they played one I hadn’t heard before but instantly developed a jones for.

In typical un-P.C. Eisenhower-era fashion, the song is an English version of something with an Italian lyric of “bacia me, bambino” (”kiss me, baby”). I was having a hard time Googling the correct spelling; who knew those cool cats in the day spelled it “botch-a-me”? Once I zeroed in on the title, I figured it would be a piece o’ pound cake to get an MP3 of it, jack. But the best recording I could find of it was on YouTube, as the underscore to a li’l piece of swingin’ performance art. (”Performance art” is what you should call everything on YouTube that might otherwise give you nightmares thinking that someone was serious when they did it.)

I’m not sure what it says about the New Information Age that the linkage led me to this drag queen singing along to “Botch-a-me My Baby.” If I thought about it a while, I’m certain there’s some sociological insight to be gleaned here. It looks a little bit like a snuff film, or something done on an early Instamatic. And I have no idea why the letterboxing is on the wrong sides.

But I didn’t understand everything in “Twin Peaks,” either.

Neil Patrick Harris represents his species very well. I don’t know what species Elmo is, but he’s cute too.

I just got done watching last night’s coverage of the women’s beach volleyball gold-medal competition at the Olympics. I like beach volleyball as an Olympic sport. Even though there’s something artificial to hearing all that Surf music between serves on that Beijing “beach,” there’s still a wildness to the whole thing — a California dude-ness — that is so un-starchy that it makes me happy.

I also love how the sand below the feet — regardless of how it got there — gives the players the ability to throw their entire bodies into saves; no hardwood floor to break any ribs or femurs. The uniforms are all bikinis and baggies (one could argue that the men should be working shirtless to flash as much skin as the women, but that’s for wiser pervs than I to determine), and I think it’s the closest organized sport will ever get to Beach Blanket Bingo.

The Americans, Misty May and Kerry Walsh, won the whole thing (for the second time). This is the team that had their bums patted by President Howdy W. Doody. I guess more success comes from having our President pat you on the ass (the volleyball players) than kick you in the balls (the country).

This has been my Equity-sanctioned “actors day off” from the play I’m rehearsing. We had dance rehearsals in the two previous days. I’m very sore.

The disconcerting thing is not knowing whether the advanced aches and pains I’m having are just the soreness I always used to get when I’d been out of condition for a while and got back to dancing . . . or whether — at my advanced age — this is a cause for x-rays and chiropractor visits.

I’m glad I have more wisdom now than I did at 20. Otherwise, this getting-older thing would just unabashedly suck.

I just watched Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal in swimming at the Beijing Olympics. No one’s ever done that before. It is moving and inspiring to see someone with “yes” coming out of every pore of their body. To watch perceived limits give way.

Earlier today I checked up on my mother, whom we put into an assisted living place two days ago. She seems less stressed now, relieved that things will be taken care of and she can relax. That relaxing seems a two-edged sword; with her apparent peace of mind I also see her slipping further away in her consciousness. I see a hollow look, more and more.

These two stories aren’t connected by similarities. If they are connected at all, it is perhaps by their differences. One is emotional because of its inspiration and the other because of its poignancy; one exemplifies the supreme focus of attention, the other a counterbalance.

There is, perhaps, one other connection. NBC’s coverage of Michael Phelps has included an extraordinary amount of exposure of his mother. Much has been made of the closeness between mother and son. I can’t see that my mother-son relationship parallels theirs in much of any way. And I am likely much closer to Mrs. Phelps’s age than that of her son. And the emotion she feels as her son goes eight for eight is certainly different than the emotion I feel as I experience the waning echo of my mother. But we are both watching . . . watching the tensile strength of the human experience get stretched, at opposite ends.

So here’s the dealio. This show I’m in — while it will be playing fifteen minutes away from where I live — is currently rehearsing an hour and a half away. And I have to step in for someone I’m understudying today, and I don’t have a clue about his part yet. And we had to put my mom into an assisted living place last night.

I just bring this all up to let you know that I’d be here posting if I weren’t a complete deranged out-of-my-mind wall-to-wall overscheduled foo’. Just for the record.

In the meantime, I’m listening to more car stereo these days. Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66 was a seminal influence on my childhood and my musical tastes. I even learned to speak Portuguese just to sing Bossa Nova music. And there’s a Brasil ‘66 CD in the car shuffle, the one that has “The Look of Love” on it.

For the record, I love most everything on this album, especially “Look Around.” But this version of “The Look of Love” — while the one that most people sample when they want to make you think of ’60s hipness — isn’t my favorite. Last night, driving home in a dead exhaustion, the radio started playing the version of this song that I subconsciously kept wishing would come up on the Sergio CD . . . the one by Dusty Springfield.

Damn, that’s a good song.

These next few weeks are going to be a bit intense for me. I got a call out-of-the-blue on Sunday asking me to be in a musical that opens in September. Rehearsals start today (”thank you, Short Notice!”). It could be up to 10 hours a day, six days a week, for a while — for pretty small money (everybody start singing “What I Did For Love”).

And, no, it’s not “A Chorus Line” — which I did 23 years ago. But it’s been almost that long since I’ve performed in a book musical. Think lovely thoughts for me, and I’ll post when able. Or not memorizing something.

I’m glad I TiVo’d Sunday night’s Olympics coverage. I had already seen a news headline saying that the U.S. team had won the 4×100m Men’s Freestyle Relay swimming competition, but watching it the next morning was extraordinary. It’s hard to imagine that Jason Lezak came from so far behind in the last leg — and won it by 0.08 of a second

But the indelible image was of Michael Phelps, when it registered that his team had just won.

That was quite a scream . . . a mix of adrenaline, testosterone, and joy.

It means he gets to continue the dream of eight gold medals in this Olympics. And it shows that miracles can sometimes be more physical than meta-.

I try not to get sucked up in the media drama about the election. You might recall me vowing to not read any more polls.

But the Big News Story of Obama being keen and swell isn’t gluing audience any longer — not to mention it’s shaming the media that are being accused of Barack-worship — and now things are being spun in the opposite direction. Obama must be in trouble because the media tell me so. I suppose they’re not making it up out of whole cloth; Karl Rove has no doubt been tutoring That Old Bush Clone. (You know what satiric, made-up movie poster I’d like to see? Karl Rove as Jabba the Hut, with John McCain chained to him wearing a slave-girl bikini: The Evil Empire Strikes Back.)

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Reported at the Beijing Olympics: This is the first time that a sitting President has visited the beach volleyball site at the Olympics.

Isn’t this also the first President who started a war?

I’m certain it’s the first President who has the time to hang out with the volleyball girls while he’s got a war going on.

Has anybody contacted the Guinness Book of World Losers?