Sassistas! Our dish on the social soup.

Dimming the House Lights

A month ago, Flannista got a phone call from the owner of her favorite art gallery -- The Box Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico -- with the sad news that she could no longer afford to stay open and would be closing down her business at the end of February.  "You have been one of my best and favorite customers," said the owner, "and I wanted to tell you personally."  The ripples from the economic turndown that began in 2008 had finally hit her business. No one was buying art. She could no longer afford the gallery rent.

I had hoped to buy a piece from the gallery this past fall, but when Matissta got the news that her job would end, I decided against it. Also, I did not know if and for how long and how much TRM would renew my professional contract. Now that I have signed that contract -- for one-year with a 40% cut in pay -- the Sassistas! have had to make more difficult choices. The latest decision is not to renew my 20+-year subscription to the Arena Stage Theater in our Nation's Capitol.

For two decades, I've taken much pride in my excellent seats for unforgettable theater productions. I saw "Our Town" several times, once with an all-black cast. I also saw the Pulitzer-Prize winning play, "'Night, Mother" twice, the second time with an all black cast (the cast is just a mother and a daughter) that dramatically deepened its meaning. I saw "Volpone" with a deaf actor in the lead and his servant as the interpreter -- a fascinating and successful cast choice.  "The Miracle Worker," featuring a young George Washington University student who had never acted before as Helen Keller was riveting, as was "Long Day's Journey Into Night," featuring Tana Hicken as Mary Tyrone, a local actress who I have seen three times in "The Belle of Amherst," a one-actor play about Emily Dickinson. These plays are just a few among the more than 200 I've seen over the last decade, from Albee to O'Neil to Osborne to Shakepeare to Williams.

I know that countless other Americans have been forced to make much more painful and even life-threatening choices to make ends meet.  The Sassistas! are lucky -- we still have roofs over our heads, plenty of food, wonderful pets and countless beloveds. Still, there is something deeply symbolic about giving up my prized theater seats; about sacrificing art to ensure I can pay my bills and quarterly taxes. What more will I have to give up before the economy turns around and corporate America needs the creative expertise of someone who, according to a head hunter, "is now too old to be seriously considered as a creative director?"  

How much did those Arena Stage plays stimulate my creativity?  Keep me young? What will be the rippling impact in my life of choosing to dim the house lights? Will continuing to shut the doors to art in my life put me out of business, too?

 

Resonate

Like, I'm so sure.

Even if you don't like the band, Journey, you totally have to watch their new video above. It's like, soooo bonus.

Remember the Salahis and, like, how they crashed a White House dinner?  Turns out Michaele Salahi left her husband Tareq (his name is so gross!) for Journey's guitarist Neal Schon!!!!  So, like, on Valentine's Day, the band released the video to their latest single, "Resonate". It is SOOO AWESOME.  Michaele and Neal make out and EVERYthing on the beach. Just like I do!!!  It is so totally awesome!

But Tareq (that name is so barf) has filed a suit for $50 million against Michaele for "a lost-reality show contract for $150,000".  What-EVer.  He's so mean because the video is, like, KILLER.  I'm in junior high school and I should know when something is like, really, really, really good.  

One of my friends (NOT!)  asked me what "resonate" means.  As if!  Who cares if you can make out on a beach?????!!!!! Duh! That is so totally rez!

 

Pretty

Let's hear it for poetry and how it can help us express

what we really need to express.  

Listen to Katie Makkai define the word "pretty".

Holy Matrimony!

Cor blimey, chaps and lassies!

It's the Sassistas! in London on our way to the Royal wedding!

As you can see, Matissta just tossed her disguise toward Kate

(who, God bless her, will need it after today) . . .

and Flannista is serving as a Royal carriage footsista

decked out in her Royal cowboy hat!

Stayed tuned today for our special Royal wedding sass!

Royal Crapola

The Royal wedding between Prince William, heir to the throne of England to Miss Catherine Elizabeth Middleton is about a day away . . . and that means one thing for sure: lots of Royal Crapola!

Clearly in a class of its own is the limited edition replica of the ring betrothed to "Kate" -- the same ring William's mother, Princess Diana, received as her engagement ring from Prince Charles nearly 30 years ago. According to its website, "The beautiful simulated 'Ceylon' sapphire represents the original quality of the centerpiece and is surrounded by breathtakingly brilliant Diamond X-4 CZs and prong set in silver plate." 

Ya had us at "X-4 CZs".  Plus it's only $19.90 and comes complete with a hinged decorative jeweler's box. Ya had us again with "hinged"!

But wait, there's more.  Click here to view a photo gallery of other Royal Crapola!  The Sassistas! are rather partial to the Prince William and Kate tea bags. 

As we revealed about a month ago, the Sassistas! received an invitation to the Royal wedding and plan to be sassing live from the streets of London.  However, we haven't yet chosen the wedding gift that best represents the sassosphere.  

Today we covet your sassgestions for the perfect royal wedding gift from the Sassistas! 

Thanks much!

Gotta Dance

The United States government is on the verge of shutting down, but like Nero -- who fiddled while Rome burned -- the Sassistas! just gotta dance! 

A TRM colleague found this video yesterday when, in jest, Flannista sassgested that the June Taylor dancers perform at TRM's annual meeting next Thursday.  The colleague had no idea who the June Taylor dancers were, so googled them and found this priceless video.  We just had to post it because . . . aren't the issues surrounding the government shutdown really black and white? 

Watch the video and see what we mean.

Spider-Panned

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive," wrote Sir Walter Scott in his epic poem, "Marmion".  Yes, the reviews of the new Broadway musical, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" are in, and they ain't pretty.  Weave a deceptive plot with deceptive music and lyrics on a deceptive set and you wind up with an epic flop . . . even with an award winning director, Julie Taymor, music by U2's Bono and The Edge and a whopping $65 million budget.

The much-reported injuries suffered on stage (see above video) can now be matched by withering words penned by some of the country's most notable critics:

• Ben Brantley of the New York Times called it "sheer ineptitude"; " . . . not only the most expensive musical to ever hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst" and "so grievously broken in every respect that it is beyond repair."
• Peter Marks of the Washington Post writes, "If you're going to spend $65 million and not end up with the best musical of all time, I suppose there's a perverse distinction in being one of the worst.  Mind you, I haven't seen every stinker ever produced, so I can't categorically confirm that 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" belongs to the dankest subbasement of American musical theater. But its application certainly seems to be in order."
• The Los Angeles Times called it "an artistic form of megalomania"; the Chicago Tribune, "incoherent"; Variety, "sketchy and ill-formed" and New York magazine, "It's by turns hyperstimulated, vivid, lurid, overeducated, underbaked, terrifying, confusing, distracted, ridiculously slick, shockingly clumsy, unmistakably monomaniacal and clinically bipolar."

Gosh, the Sassistas! wish these critics wouldn't be so wishy-washy.  Further, we wish they could develop the keen eye for musical theater that someone like Glenn Beck has developed.  Three weeks ago, Beck went to a "Spider-Man" preview performance and the next day on his radio show pronounced:

This is the best show I've ever seen, bar none.  Heads and shoulders above everything else.  They were doing stuff I've never seen before.  It starts in the first three minutes like Cirque du Soleil and like you see at Disney.  And then it just goes up from there.  The acting, the acrobatics, the physicality of this is, it's athletics.  It's unbelievable.  The stage is the eighth wonder of the world.

What do theater critics know, anyway? They can be SO mean and snooty. The official opening date for "Spider-Man" is March 15th -- pushed back from its previous opening date of February 7th which had also been pushed back (March 15th was the fifth announced opening). Most critics stuck to the February date. Isn't that like insisting on being served an entree that's only half-done?

The Sassistas! think the sassosphere can salvage, perhaps even save, "Spider Man: Turn Back the Dark" with some simple tweeks, such as better sets, costumes, songs and a coherent plot. Or even better -- think of a famous story that deserves to be made into a musical like "Spider-Man"!  What would it be called?  What are some of the songs?  

Today, let's all take a flying leap into musical theater!