Enrico and I saw this show with Patti LuPone at a Sunday matinee in 1988. It was the start of our Cole Porter obsession.
I had bought tickets at the last minute and we somehow ended up front row center. The stage, only about 4 feet above the level of our seats, represented the deck of an ocean liner, complete with a railing.
When we arrived to take our seats, I had been puzzled at a rectangle of soft foam taped to the floor more or less under my feet. Later in the show we learned what that was for: there’s a scene in which two characters are leaning on the rail talking, swigging from a bottle of champagne. They finish the bottle and drop it over the rail – cue sound effect of bottle falling and finally splashing. It landed on our feet.
I had my own encounter with the UT police back around 1983-84 when I was a student. I had been elected to the student council of the Liberal Arts department. One of our privileges was a few rooms that we could use as a lounge and offices, various of us would hang out there between classes. (Aside: That was where I got my hands on a Macintosh computer for the first time.)
Sometime during that period, I was summoned to the offices of the University police department. A young woman cop was investigating the theft of cash from the purse of one of my Liberal Arts Council colleagues in that shared area – the student had left her purse unattended in one of the offices, about $400 (that she needed to pay rent) disappeared from her wallet. Someone said they had seen me in that office.
I was very likely in the office, but I certainly hadn’t stolen and money and would never dream of doing so. I told the cop that. She probed and pushed and told me repeatedly that she wouldn’t come down on me too hard if I only confessed. I pushed right back and said I wasn’t about to confess to a crime I hadn’t committed. She reduced me to tears, but there was no way I was going to do that. Finally she dismissed me and said we would talk again.
She called me back a few days later, did the same performance all over again, and demanded that I take a polygraph (lie detector) test. I said I’d be fine with that. She kept pushing for a confession.
I returned to her office a few days later expecting to be polygraphed. She said: “You’re too agitated, the result wouldn’t be reliable.” I don’t know if she ever seriously meant to do it. At some point during the conversation, she said something like: “I’m just as good as any other cop, you know.” Seems like she had a chip on her shoulder about not being a “real” police person. After that she finally gave up and as far as I know nothing ever went on my university record. I was left shaken and furious for a long time, and that memory still enrages me. I don’t think they ever did find out who took the money.
My conclusion from this is that university police are dangerous, precisely because they don’t think anyone takes them as seriously as other cops. Students beware.
Back in the 70s, there seems to have been a genre of songs, both pop and disco, which featured endlessly repeated inane lyrics. Somehow they were popular, perhaps because they were so easily learned by international audiences. One such, Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, was a big enough hit to get all the way to Thailand before we left there in 1971.
I didn’t have much exposure to what was current on any radio at the time, but I suppose it got airplay on Thai stations. Our housemaids, Wandee and Uthai, knew the song, and gleefully sang it to my infant brother (who was then too young to understand the lyrics). I found the song profoundly creepy. “Where’s your mama gone, little baby son?” “Far, far away.” Did they wish for or foresee my mother’s absence?
I was already jealous of their doting on my brother. I didn’t get much attention from my mother, so there wasn’t much to envy there. But I was frightened by the implication that one’s mother could simply disappear: “Woke up this morning and my mamma was gone.”
Myrna organized a spa day, about a dozen Bay Area friends joined, plus Tin Tin who wasn’t able to make it to the wedding due to previous commitments. We had various spa treatments and lounging about in bathrobes, then went for a lovely Greek meal.
