"Every Little Step" - For Fans Of "A Chorus Line"

As I've written here before, "A Chorus Line" is my favorite Broadway Musical and, in my opinion, the perfect synthesis of dramatic and performing arts.

"Every Little Step," in limited release right now, is a documentary look at how the 2005 revival of "A Chorus Line" came together.

The filmmakers had the complete cooperation of the creators of the original production, and of Michael Bennet's estate, and there is a lot of first-person insight into the way the original show was created.

As opposed to "American Idol," where every one wants to be a "Star," this move (and the play) is all about wanting to get a job.

And that should certainly resonate at this point in time.

On Pride

“I have a new client, a laid-off lawyer, who’s commuting in every day — to his Starbucks,” said Robert C. Chope, a professor of counseling at San Francisco State University and president of the employment division of the American Counseling Association. “He gets dressed up, meets with colleagues, networks; he calls it his Western White House. I have encouraged him to keep his routine.”

I'm sure that many in the crowded demographic of the recently unemployed can relate to this, and, if they're smart, have implemented some variation of this strategy.

Cougars

When I first started hearing about "cougars" in the context of older women dating younger men (as with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, pictured), I wondered how this could be okay when I had understood that older men dating younger women was not. Was there a double standard being applied here?

Well, based on some really unscientific research reported in today's Boston Globe, it looks like it may all be a moot point:

"If I do the age-appropriate [events,] I get tons of women," Trickett said. "When I do younger men and older women, I get tons of women. When I do younger women older men, I get tons of older men and I struggle to get the women."

"Sure, Demi Moore broke a mold, and I know a few couples - family members and friends of friends - who represent the highly publicized demographic of older women and younger men, but the dating industry will tell you that for the most part that demographic is a myth. Men still seek younger women, especially as those men get older themselves.

"It's the general rules, what happens when people hook up and go into a relationship," said Mark Brooks, an online dating industry consultant who runs Online Personals Watch. "With men dating women, it tends to be up to six years younger but it will only be up to two years older."

Tom And Gisele Marry - Again!

Following up on a recent post, Tom and Gisele are getting married again:

"Word on the wedding front is that a number of Tom Brady’s teammates and some New England Patriot brass will be heading to Costa Rica next month to watch No. 12 and Gisele Bundchen tie the knot - again!

"Our locker room spies confirm that invites have gone out for an April wedding at Gisele’s getaway on the beach in Malpais on Costa Rica’s South Pacific Coast."
(Source: Boston Herald)

Sara Jane Olson

"The first time I encountered the word 'kleptomaniac,' I asked my mother what it meant.

"She said, 'That’s what they call it when a rich person steals something.'” (Caitlin Flanagan, in today's New York Times.)

For those of us who lived through the scattered debris of the 1960s, the story of a radical extremist from that time who managed to evade authorities for decades still has a lot of resonance, and the issues of punishment and redemption are quite complicated:

"We should review, very briefly: Sara Jane Olson, née Kathleen Soliah, was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the ’70s militant group most notorious for both kidnapping the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst and espousing a philosophy at one with the age: “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.”

"Ms. Soliah robbed a bank in Carmichael, Calif., during which a mother of four was murdered, and a young pregnant bank teller was kicked in the belly and later had a miscarriage. According to Ms. Hearst, who has proved to be a reliable informant on the actions of the S.L.A. (and who was driving the getaway car), it was Ms. Soliah who did the kicking. Furthermore, bullets found in the dead woman’s body and scattered on the floor of the bank matched a gun found in a dresser drawer in Ms. Soliah’s room in the S.L.A. safehouse. Ms. Soliah was also part of a plot to murder Los Angeles police officers by placing pipe bombs packed with nails under two squad cars.

"Ms. Soliah was indicted, but then fled to Zimbabwe. Eventually, she returned under her new alias and married a well-to-do and highly respected doctor in St. Paul, where she became a pillar of the community and a mom of three straight-arrow children, and where she confined her terrorist activities to dinner theater. (She became an amateur actress, with a specialty in — God help us all — Shakespeare.)"

I recommend reading Caitlin Flanagan's entire Op-Ed.