Wednesday, May 31, 2006

No, I'm not dead...

... just very busy lately. I haven't had time to write anything for a while.

But I will say this: Crosstown traffic in Philadelphia is starting to feel like crosstown traffic in NYC.

My commute in the morning is 2.5 miles, which has been averaging about 25 minutes - which is travelling about 6 miles per hour, on average. People walk at a speed of about 4 to 6 miles per hour.

Nancy & I noticed the increase of traffic and decrease of speed about a month ago, when S. Broad street was bumber to bumper stand-still traffic the entire day, for no special reason at all.

Of course this hasn't been helped by the Philadelphia Streets department. They've decided to take road graters and tear-up almost every street in Center City. This makes the traffic crawl, because people are scared to drive over the bumps and raised manhole covers.

And I have to say - there's nothing more pathetic than watching some yuppie in their huge freakin' SUV driving tenderly over the bumps at 2 mph so they don't hurt their widdle carsy-warsy.

HEY! YOBBO! It's an SUV! It was INVENTED to drive over bumps!

And speaking of New York, a week or so ago Nancy & I went up for a day of Big Apple culture.

First, it turns out a colleague of ours' husband is a rather well-known playwright - P. Seth Bauer. His most recent play, Early in the Mourning, was receiving a staged reading (where actors on a bare stage read directly from the script, in character). It was great.

The parts were read by Estelle Parsons, Jerry Stiller, and Peter Frechette, (and 1 other actor whose name I can't recall, but will edit in later!)

Next, we went to a caberet of UArts Music Theater students (all students of Nancy's) at the Triad - a really nice show - these folks should have no trouble getting work in productions.

Then we wrapped up the evening with a performance by Les Paul at the Iridium Jazz Club. Les Paul is one of the most important people in modern music, and if you don't know why, then look it up! The guy is almost 91, but still plays fabulously. As I watched the rhythm guitarist (Lou Pallo) playing a black Gibson Les Paul guitar along side of Les Paul himself, I thought "how cool is it to be that guy?" The whole band was great, especially woman playing stand-up bass. Here's a photo of them all...

After the show, we drove back to slow, bumpy Philadelphia.