Friday, September 26, 2014

Review - Bauer and a little extra


Even with my financial and dental struggles, I just can't stop myself from buying theater tickets.  TDF is my crack addiction.  And so it was that I bought a ticket for Lauren Gunderson's new play Bauer, performed at 59E59.  I believe I've previously mentioned that I enjoy a play about art/artists/artists' processes, so I figured this would be in my wheelhouse.  Add into the equation that I worked with the playwright several years ago and enjoyed the experience very much, and you can guess I had a positive experience at the theater Wednesday night.

Bauer tells a story that was completely unknown to me - it imagines a 1953 meeting between the painter Rudolf Bauer, his wife Louise and his former patron/supporter/lover, Countess Hilla von Rebay.  The meeting takes place in Bauer's empty and clearly abandoned studio.  As the play unfolds, we discover that Bauer hasn't painted for over a dozen years and that he has been estranged from von Rebay for the same amount of time.  The reasons for the estrangement and Bauer's continued refusal to paint is slowly revealed throughout the 90 minute intermissionless play.  I guess I should also mention that this play is based on a true story, which has recently been told in documentary form in Betrayal: The Life and Art of Rudolf Bauer (which I will totally be on the lookout for).

I had no knowledge of this amazing story of contemporary art, so I was completely engrossed in the story throughout and couldn't believe how these things could happen.  I'm a bit of a contemporary art dodo, but I do know Kandinsky, Klee, Man Ray and other artists who were contetmporaries of Rudolf Bauer.  I've also been to the Guggenheim Museum a number of times, so to hear stories about the museum's beginnings and of the political struggles behind the scenes was fascinating.  How someone can go from great acclaim to obscurity is startling.  There were so many layers in the very-witty and well-constructed script:  interpersonal feelings between the three characters; ideas about contemporary art; what happens when an artist stops making art (who is an artist if they're not making art - are they anyone anymore?); money vs passion; what is your legacy?  So many interesting ideas were just dancing around throughout the entire play - it could've been a very heavy historical lesson, but was instead full of humor and pathos. 

The direction was a little heavy-handed in the "busy work" sections of the piece, but the handling of the three actors, when confronting themselves or each other, was terrifically dramatic.  The script did an excellent job of individualizing these characters and making them sympathetic and idiosyncratic at the same time.  Clearly, the author's sympathies are with the artist and not the unseen forces who seemed to be against him, but he wasn't made into a saint.  He had foibles and annoyances, but they were all realistically portrayed as part of a whole.


photo credit: Carol Rosegg
All three actors were terrific and had great chemistry.  They were spot on with period details and their dialect work - it was great to see two strong women, not defined by men, but still struggling to navigate through a man's world.  They were very realistic to me.  The set was terrific; the white walls of a neglected studio became filled with color and light when projections would splash against the walls during flashback-y portions of the play.  Seeing a few of the paintings and drawings as they were being described was a great idea.  And I found the ending to be completely thrilling, with paint, color and feeling all coming to life.

I very much enjoyed Bauer and look forward to seeing more of Gunderson's work.  I have a couple of other new plays by women coming up in the next couple of weeks, so maybe I'm on a trend.  A non-purposeful trend, but a trend nonetheless.  Oh, and I also liked that the ushers passed out small catalogues of Bauer's work on our way out of the theater.  It was enjoyable to get a look at the art that had been described during the show and to feel that a forgotten man is finally being remembered.  I also enjoyed the s'mores ice cream I treated myself to at Sprinkles on the way to the subway... :)


A couple of other recent theater-related experiences:  last Sunday was the annual Broadway Flea Market to raise funds for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.  My office once again had a table at the Flea Market to help raise money.  Even though the day was almost oppressively humid, it was still a grand time.  I had a lot of terrific volunteers to help me throughout the day (a special shout out to my handsome chum who does the lion's share of the clean up work with me) and we had two extra-special guests, both hugely good sports, who came to sign their scripts and meet their fans.  That's always fun.  Considering we mainly sell things for $1, we did fantastically well.  We increased our sales from last year by more than $800, which is exciting!  And everyone who stopped by our table did so with a smile and appreciation, which isn't always the case.  I'm pretty sure Tyne Daly stopped by our table to buy something, but I was little too gobsmacked to be sure.  I was on my feet for about twelve hours, and my shoulder is still a little stiff, but all in all, it was a great day and I'm sorry I have to wait a whole year to do it again.


Last Monday was the Innovative Theatre Awards ceremony, held at Baruch College.  I was very fortunate to be invited by one of the movers and shakers of the awards, and to be able to sit in the VIP section.  My third row center seat was awesome!  I got to share hugs and laughs with some friends both before and after the event, I enjoyed the show itself, had a great time sort-of-liveTweeting, and reminiscing in my mind about when I worked with many of the presenters/winners.  I again remind myself that I need to get out and see more of this innovative work - so many of the shows sounded really interesting and I'm sorry I missed them.  The best part of the evening, as always, is the sense of community and love that permeates the room.  Everyone is so supportive of everyone else, it's a great feeling.  Makes you ready to face the new season with a renewed vigor and love.  At least that's what it did for me...
 














 

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Review - Love Letters


I was very fortunate to receive comp tickets for last night's final preview performance of the Broadway revival of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters.  I'd seen the show before at a community theater in Ohio and I'd seen the television adaptation, but I didn't see it when it played New York with its rotating cyle of stars.  This new revival has a lot of stars lined up, too, but I'm thrilled with who I got to see last night.  I was also thrilled to be able to go with my handsome talented pal, who I haven't seen nearly enough of this summer.

Love Letters tells the story of Andrew Makepiece Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, childhood friends who exchange letters for 50 years.  We first meet them at seven-years-old and get a peek into their lives through adolescence, college, young adulthood and middle age.  It's a seemingly simple story, just two actors reading from the 'letters' at a table, but this script is so much more.

The opening night cast (and the cast we saw last night) was Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy.  I've been fans of theirs for years, though I only knew Farrow from her film work.  I'd already been blown away by Dennehy in Death of a Salesman and Long Day's Journey Into Night, so I knew I would enjoy him.  I was not wrong, he was fantastic, but I was rather surprised to be so completely entranced by Mia Farrow. 


photo credit: Carol Rosegg
Farrow captured the quicksilver qualities of Melissa, a self-destructive and immature girl, who never really grows up, but yet she's so fast and funny, so smart and touching, you just love her, even when she's behaving 'badly.'  Her vulnerability is always showing, but you also see her resolve underneath.  When her resolve finally wavers, it's heartbreaking.  And Dennehy really brings his own gruff teddy bear-ness to the role of Andy, a man who's been programmed his whole life to be a certain kind of person, but his affection and attraction to Melissa shows him another life he might be able to have.  He so beautifully expresses himself via letters, but we discover that expressiveness in his real life is harder to come by.  Both performers give extremely detailed and moving readings of this still-sharp script.  Their chemistry is also warm, familiar and quite unexpected.  I should check the internet to see if they've ever performed together before...


The dialogue, the jokes, the poignancy still jumps off the page of Love Letters, even in this age of iPhones, e-mail and Twitter.  You would think the play would seem dusty and dated by now.  It doesn't.  It's as fresh and funny as ever.  Human connection is always relevant and the need to find someone to understand you is still universal.  I laughed and I cried during Love Letters - I even thought about writing a letter to a a certain someone, to see if I could reveal "my true self" as Gurney describes.  But maybe not.  It takes a lot of bravery to do that, bravery that's beautifully portrayed in A.R. Gurney's script and that Dennehy and Farrow have in spades as well.  Who would've thought this play first performed in the late 1980s could be so aspirational?

I did have the tiniest of quibbles, but it could perhaps just be me:  when I saw the show before, the performers were at two separate writing tables, so they could move around a bit in their chairs.  This production has the actors sitting at one table, so from our vantage point (second row, extreme house right), we could really only see the actors in profile until the very end.  It might've been nice to be able to see their faces a little more throughout the evening.  But, again, that's an itty bitty quibble. 


Upcoming stars include Carol Burnett, Alan Alda, Candice Bergen, Stacy Keach, Martin Sheen, Diana Rigg and Anjelica Huston.  I sure wouldn't mind going back to see how the play shifts and changes with different actors playing the parts, and I know other performers will emphasize different aspects within the characters.  Mia Farrow seemed so perfect, though, I'm curious to see how other actresses take on this very complicated woman.  I'm so grateful to have received comp tickets to last night's show and I highly recommend everyone go see it (and I was especially glad to see it with my handsome talented pal, who loved it as much as I did).  You'll be surprised at how it can still make you feel.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Review - And I And Silence


I couldn't help myself, I had to buy a ticket to the Signature Theatre's production of Naomi Wallace's new play And I And Silence.  I mean, how could I miss a new play by an American female playwright?  I couldn't.  I got one of the few remaining $25 tickets for the Friday before it closed.  I'm not sure I entirely enjoyed myself, but I am glad I saw it.

I don't know a lot about Wallace's work - I saw one of her plays, The Hard Weather Boating Party, at the Humana Fest a few years ago and remember enjoying it.  After reading a couple of articles about her, I see that she is also a poet and that she frequently writes about people who are powerless.  I think both of those qualities come into play in And I And Silence.  The story takes place in two time periods: in 1950, two teenage girls meet and bond in a girls' prison.  One girl is white, the other is black.  Then we see these girls as adults, in 1959, after they're out in society.  Their bonds are tested and their interdependence works both for and against them.  The play is very episodic, with relatively brief scenes filled with very poetic language, moving seamlessly back and forth between the two time periods.  The scene work was good and I could see the gradual changes in the characters throughout, but it did seem as if most of the 'action' of the play was saved for the very end.  It gave maximum impact, I guess, but it made waiting for it a little tedious. 

Well, not tedious, exactly.  I did enjoy seeing this story play out, since it's one I hadn't seen before.  I always enjoy stories about women and their connection to each other; however, this piece was rather unrelenting in its fatalistic quality - I knew from the beginning there was no other way for this story to end other than the way it ended.  So I was rather depressed throughout, wishing there could be another future for these interesting characters.  Though I did also feel that the characters were sometimes more mouthpieces and not as flesh-and-blood as they could've been, which kept me from getting as emotionally engaged as I normally like to (though that may not have been the playwright's wish).


photo credit: Ruth Fremson
The play is very well-acted by two sets of actresses - the younger characters are quite joyful and optimistic, so seeing that played against the older versions of the same characters and their gradual descent into despair was well done.  Each acting pair had a nice chemistry and I could believe them completely as friends and (near) soulmates.  If I didn't quite buy into the relationship as depicted in the last scenes of the play, well, all right.  I mean, I guess I can understand how the characters got there, but I was a little skeptical at the same time.


As I was watching And I And Silence, I was reminded a few times of Genet's The Maids; I also felt hints of the film Heavenly Creatures, where those characters have such a fantasy life that they fantasize themselves out of ever understanding their reality.  There were moments of a sort of erotic tension in this play when the girls, while in prison, play-acted hitting each other with a switch to prepare for their grown-up lives as servants (and a strange aside - during one of the scenes with the switch [large twig, actually], the switch broke and flew into the audience.  It hit the woman next to me, who shrieked, then her husband got into the act.  The play continued, but I missed a lot of what was going on because of the ruckus.  I guess, in theory, I could've missed the dialogue that explained the whole play and was the most emotional part of the evening.  I doubt it, but maybe.  I asked the gal after the play if she was ok and she said she was, it just grazed her cheek, but it scared her.  As I was leaving, her party was speaking to the house manager.  I'm guessing a different prop was used for the last few performances).  It was an interesting  piece of business, but I'm not quite sure how it illuminated anything else in the play.


I felt badly for these young women, their powerlessness and the fact they couldn't regain their selves and couldn't just live their lives, because of their race, because of their station and situation in life, but it was sort of a disconnected bad feeling, not a completely engaged one.  So, for me, And I And Silence was more an interesting intellectual exercise rather than a compelling theatrical experience.  For all I know, that's exactly what Wallace intended.  It just didn't add up to everything I hoped for in my world.  Ah well.  On to the next.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Thoughts on The Country House


I know I have previously mentioned how much I love a Donald Margulies play - I just love his use of dialogue and language, his realistic characters and the way he crafts his plays.  Of course, he's also a very lovely person so that might color my opinion, but only just a little.  When TDF offered discounted tickets to the second preview of his new play, The Country House, I, of course, pounced.  Since I saw only the second preview, I'll offer just a few thoughts, since I'm sure changes will be made before the show opens next month.

The Country House is about a family of actors/artists who gather in the family home in the Berkshires on the first anniversary of a beloved family member's death.  Everyone is still grieving the loss and one of the things I liked best about the play is how I felt the loss of that character myself.  There was a palpable sense of someone not being there, and that someone was the one who kept this rather dysfunctional family together.  Without her, everyone was spinning off-center and the play depicts them trying to find their balance again.


Blythe Danner is the matriarch of the family, a famous actress who is returning to work (at the Williamstown Theatre Festival) for the first time since the loss of her daughter.  Danner, who is just seriously gorgeous onstage, is wonderful playing all the layers of this woman.  Vain, shallow, talented, loving, and oh so smart - Danner hits all the right notes.  And she also plays the comedy in the piece beautifully.  Really, everyone in the cast is terrific, but I was most taken with Sarah Steele, who plays Danner's granddaughter, still grieving for her dead mother.  Steele is the only one in this artistic family who has rejected the artistic life and her clear-eyed view of her overly-dramatic family members is very smartly portrayed.

photo credit: Michael Lamont
There were a few stumbles over lines, but the show is in excellent shape for such an early preview.  The dialogue in the play ranges from breezy comedy to drop-dead-serious drama and the actors handle the changes very well.  There are so many laugh-out loud lines, I wish I could remember every one of them.  I loved how very contemporary ideas about theater, movies, celebrity and family were all played with elan by the entire cast.  If I have a quibble with one of the characters and his story arc, well, so be it.  I mean, I do know people like this particular character, but that didn't help with my frustration.  Or my quibble.  And maybe that was just me BECAUSE I know people like this character.  Who knows?  I actually vacillated back and forth over understanding him and being frustrated by him.  Maybe that was the point.  Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, I don't know.  I was very moved by the end of the play, and kept thinking about it all the way home, so maybe I wasn't as frustrated as I thought...

The set is fantastic - of course it looks like the summer house of an acting family and I want to move in immediately. I thought the lighting was great and the original music by Peter Golub was very provocative yet engaging.  The audience really seemed to be having a great time, so I hope The Country House will be a big fat hit.  Once again, Donald has captured me with his smart dialogue and characters, and his real affection for them and his acknowledgement of their emotional lives.  I really enjoyed myself at the play and hope I can see it again later in the run. 

[the cast photo is from the Geffen Playhouse production of this play from earlier this year.  the cast is mainly the same.]

Friday, September 5, 2014

Thoughts on Indian Ink


Last night I finally finally got back into a theater.  It seems like forever since I've seen a show (I guess it's only been a few weeks, but I go in for hyperbole).  Even though I've sworn to not buy tickets for awhile, I went on a TDF spree last week.  Three shows are coming up.  I rationalized it by thinking that I didn't really spend any money when my mom was here, since she always buys, and I didn't really spend any money during the Week of the Tooth Trauma, since I was sick and stoned most of the week and didn't eat or leave my house.  I figured I deserved some theater.  This may be it for awhile, though.  My new tooth is going to cost me a lot of money, out of pocket.  I applied to be a voter for a particular theater award group and hoped against hope they would choose me, not only because I love rewarding good work, but also because I could get to see more work.  For free.  But they rejected me, darn it.  I guess I'll just have to apply again next year.  Sorry, that's a lot of blah blah blah to report that there will probably be fewer theater reviews this coming season...


But getting back to last night - my night at the theater was simply wonderful - I got a ticket to the first preview performance of the revival of Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink.  I'm a huge fan of Tom Stoppard's work.  I just adore the way he combines the intellectual/political with the personal/emotional.  His characters are always so real and so rich; I'm always so sad when his plays are over because I won't get to spend any more time with these characters!  I miss them!  And his stories always play through my mind for days afterwards.  Stoppard is at the very tip top of my list of favorite contemporary playwrights.

I'd heard about Indian Ink for years, but I'll admit I've never read or seen it.  I've heard it described as one of Stoppard's more 'accessible' plays, which means little to me.  His other plays may be dizzyingly dense, but I didn't consider them inaccessible.  Perhaps that's just me.  I do think that Indian Ink is maybe gentler than some other of his plays.  Not that there is any less passion or intellect, but maybe because it takes place in London and India, there is a more, uh, polite quality.  Well, a surface of politeness.  Ugh.  I can't quite express what I mean.  Moving on.


Indian Ink is set in two time periods, in 1930s India and then in England and India in the 1980s.  It deals with a poet, Flora Crewe, who went to India in 1930 for her health.  Much of the dialogue comes from letters she sent to her younger sister, but we also see scenes that illuminate those letters.  The scenes in the 1980s deal with an academic writing a book on Flora Crewe and he turns to her sister, now in her late 70s, to fill in some blanks for him.  The play moves back and forth in time, and sometimes the two time periods start to meld when the things being described are being performed in front of us.  And the way history often gets things wrong, that's also a lovely aspect of the play.  There are conversations about life and death, art, passion, the Indian views on British Imperialism, and how to bridge the gap between what you want and what you think you can have.  How to have passion for the right things (or people).  This is all really rich, rewarding stuff.

I won't say much about the production itself, since it will undoubtedly grow and change throughout its preview period, but I seriously loved loved loved every minute of Indian Ink and I'm already dying to go back.  And there are quite a few minutes to love - the show currently clocks in at a shade under three hours.  But the time flew by for me, I was so enraptured by these people and their relationships.  I was on the edge of my seat all night, wondering what came next.  So much of the play is ruefully funny, so I was on the verge of tears while I laughed.  I love that feeling. That's the sign of a great play, yes?

All of the actors were superb, with Rosemary Harris as first among equals.  I saw her in an early preview of Athol Fugard's The Road to Mecca a few years ago and she had some struggles with her lines that night.  There was no such problem last night.  She was spot on and so enchanting.  Her prickliness with the stuffy academic juxtaposed with the affection she grew to have for a young artist - first rate.  She has many ups and downs to play and does them all wonderfully.  She is really a theatrical treasure, and like the late Elaine Stritch, she seems to be lit from within.  A true stage creature.

I was also very taken by Firdous Bamji, who plays an artist in 1930's India who meets Flora Crewe, wants to paint her and strikes up a lovely, idiosyncratic relationship with her.  They each give each other something so important - you think you know where things are going, but they always took a clever turn.  I was kept guessing throughout, and to have things happen for different reasons than the ones imagined by the stuffy academic was really terrific.  Things are never as they seem and I loved that.  Bamji was just charming and warm and completely original.  The conversations his character had with Flora Crewe were so lovely and I just wanted them to go on and on.  I will definitely keep my radar on him in the future.

For a first preview, the show went remarkably smoothly.  There might've been a couple of missed sound cues (the music/sound design by Dan Moses Schreier is fantastic) and I think there was an issue with a scenic cue towards the end of the play, but all of that will get smoothed out and nothing came close to hampering my enjoyment of the play.  I really did love it and cross my fingers that I can find a way to see it again further on into the run.  Now that I know WHAT happens, it would be a treat to go back and observe HOW it happens.


photo credit: Alex Goodlett, Getty Images
Oh, and a special treat, Tom Stoppard was sitting a few rows behind me!  It was thrilling to see him and he was quite generous with his time, chatting with everyone who stopped to say hello.  I probably should've stopped, too, but I was anxious to get home and catch some tennis.  Thankfully, my Roger pulled through a very tough match at the US Open last night.  I kept thinking, please, Roger, WIN, haven't I suffered enough lately?  :)

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

The US Open At Night, 2014 version


I'm a member of the USTA (United States Tennis Association), mainly so I can get a subscription to Tennis magazine and also so I can have access to early-bird tickets for the US Open.  USTA members can get two-for-one tickets for the first two night sessions, so I go with a group of friends to check out the action.  We just have a good time, eating fried foods, drinking overpriced drinks, watching tennis, and enjoying each other's company.  One year we were rained out, but we had fun anyway!  I'll include pictures from past Coterie Nights at the Open at the bottom of this post.  Anyway, during the early bird ticket access, I buy our group's tickets and I also get myself a ticket for sometime during the Labor Day weekend.  Buying tickets in April makes the anticipation grow through the summer, though buying tickets so early can't take into effect how I'm going to feel all those months later...

You've read the saga of my tooth issues.  Of course, they had to happen during the US Open.  But since Roger Federer, my absolute superduper uber-favorite, was scheduled to play last Tuesday night, and since I didn't want to miss one minute of spending time with my friends, I took my swollen face and toothache-ridden self to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.  I took along a care package of a pain pill, an antibiotic, crackers and tepid water, along with my huge hat to try to hide my face.  Of course, I also forgot to take my camera, so no really good pictures of my Roger.  :(


Everything worked out fine, though I did leave before the second match, unfortunately.  I would've loved to have watched Serena Williams take on young Taylor Townsend, but I needed to get back into bed, plus taking another antibiotic would've made me a bit nauseated, so I wanted to get home before that.  But for the match I did see, I was thrilled.  My beautiful gal pal was my designated cheerer, since I could barely open my mouth.  There were lots of fist pumps and arms raised by me, though, since Roger played a superb match.  His opponent, Marinko Matosevic from Australia, played valiantly, and seems to be quite a character, but Roger was sharp from the get go.  He floated atop the court and showed us his full arsenal, moving forward to the net quite a bit, and even hit a tweener, which comically hit his opponent in the back (accidentally).  Even Roger had to laugh.  Michael Jordan and Anna Wintour were two of the celebs sitting in Roger's player's box, and everything went according to plan.  Well, until Roger got broken in the third set and I thought to myself, 'if you lose this set, I'm coming down there to knock you upside the head'!  Of course, he righted the ship and won.  I guess maybe I scared him.  : )

My solo US Open ticket was for last Saturday night - when I saw the program, I wasn't thrilled.  The first match was the new sensation, Eugenie Bouchard from Canada, playing Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova from the Czech Republic.  I haven't quite gotten on the Bouchard bandwagon - I find her game rather ungainly to watch (at least on tv), though I do admire her grit.  I will admit that watching her live is a more pleasant experience than watching her on tv.  She is lightning-fast around the court, and she moves very smoothly, though the way she sort of unhinges at the waist to bend forward and throws herself into hitting the ball just isn't aesthetically pleasing to me.  Her opponent was also playing well and they had some really good rallies and there was a lot of tension in the match.  There also was a lot of mind-blowingly bad unforced errors throughout the match, but the wind in the stadium was a big factor in that.  My hair was blowing all over and I wasn't even that close to the court (though closer than I've ever been before!).  Zahlavova-Strycova had many chances to put the match away and just couldn't do it.  Bouchard is extremely strong mentally and just waited for her opportunity to win.  You can't really teach that quality.  So while I still think Bouchard is overly-hyped at the moment, I could see more of her appeal as a tennis player after watching her match.  I didn't quite get the same enjoyment out of what I saw of the second match.

Oh, before I go on, I want to say that the little girl who sang "America the Beautiful" between matches had a gorgeous voice and I was so happy she chose to sing the song as written, without embellishment.  Thumbs up from me.  OK, moving on.  I previously mentioned that I saw the Aussie teen Nick Kyrgios practice for a bit last week during the qualifying tournament and that I was a bit put off by his swagger.  His match was second up last Saturday, so I watched him take on Tommy Robredo.  Well, I saw the first set of the match with Tommy Robredo.  I didn't plan my pill-popping very well and had to leave early to get home in time to take my next antibiotic.  Dumb.  I don't know why I thought I'd be there for less than six hours.  But I digress...


Nick Kyrgios started the match like a hurricane, blasting poor Tommy off the court, though Tommy did break back to at least make things interesting at the end of the first set.  The crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium loved the kid, but I was just still turned off by the swagger and the showboating; I have to keep reminding myself, he is just 19.  I left after the first set, thinking I could just watch the rest of the match from the comfort of my couch.  I was surprised when I got home that Robredo had turned the match around, using his guile and experience, over the brash ball-bashing inexperience of his opponent.  I was happy to see Robredo come through the match and maybe teach the Aussie a little lesson.  We'll see if I warm to Kyrgios as his career progresses - I'm sure he'll be a part of the tennis conversation for years to come.  He has a lot of talent, but that doesn't mean he'll ever be one of my favorites.


I can't believe the summer went so quickly and my US Open live viewing is over already.  One of the only good things about staying home last week with toothache trauma was that I could have my tv on in the background and I could keep up with the matches during my drug-induced/pain-induced hazes.  So I'm a little surly that I can't really watch anything while I'm at work.  I'm sure my office mates haven't noticed... :)