by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 22, 2007
I was half-convinced I’d waken.
Satisfied enough to dream you,
happily I was mistaken ….
– “Johanna” / Sweeney Todd
My obsession with Sweeney Todd has been going on for close to 25 years now … trumped only by my obsession with the wondrous Stephen Sondheim himself which started when I was barely 13.
I can still remember that moment that froze me, made me stand still in the middle of that black and white checkered floor in my parent’s basement, where I’d lip-synced my way through the Rogers and Hammerstein canon. I’d just gotten the album “Hooked on Broadway” (Part of the successful “Hooked On …” series) and was listening to it for the first time. There was a Sondheim/Gershwin tribute and I was a Gershwin fan ever since I heard Rhapsody in Blue so was paying particular attention. Who this Sondheim fella was, I hadn’t a clue. Oh, but I was about to find out … and nothing would ever be the same again.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on September 29, 2007
Living in New York you see a lot of famous people around. Not that you ever get used to it … there’s always a little thrill when you see a celebrity in a place you’re not expecting them to be. But, you know, this IS New York. You’re bound to run into a star as you go about your own fabulous day.
Wednesday morning on my way to the subway I passed a row of movie trailers parked along the street and thought nothing of it. All very bla bla bla until I looked to the right and saw John Malkovich speaking very intently to a girl who was either a 19 year old PA or a 19 year old fan. Either way, he was being very intense. And this, only a week after running into Chloe Sevigny!
I happen to live in a very filmable area so it’s normal to see those long trailers parked along my block. It’s sometimes nice but mostly annoying — like when you’re trying to have a romantic baloney sandwich with your Boo on the promenade in the moonlight and get shushed off your bench because it’s a “closed set”.
I once kept a list of every celebrity I ever bumped into but it was on some hard drive that crashed and I never tried to re-create it. Until now.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on September 20, 2007
There’s an episode of Will & Grace where Jack tries to ignore Patti LuPone as she chatters, crawls around on the floor, and just generally makes herself un-ingnorable. At one point he screams “Shut up Patti LuPone! Shut your brassy, magnificent trap!!!”
She turns around and deadpans … “They either love me or they hate me.” I laughed. I laughed because I … hate her. Those are HER WORDS …
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 21, 2007
I go to the movies. A lot. Not like I see one every week, of course – that would be overkill. More like every OTHER week.
There are a lot of movies like The Namesake and Once (or even Crazy Love and Ratatouille) that keep me coming back. Yet every now and then I’m surprised at how I was suckered into paying ten bucks for a clunker like Epic Movie or the Omen remake (yes, I gave in to the hype and saw it on 06/06/06) both of which left me waiting for a scene bright enough to light the theatre so I could steal a look at my watch. I spent much of those movies shaking up the popcorn bag to ensure good Milk Duds distribution throughout and wiggling around in my seat trying not to imagine that there were roaches crawling across my feet. The mind wanders.
You think I’d know better, considering I’d probably seen the trailer for those movies at least five or six times. But hey, they edit those things to be funny/scary/baffling so, really, you can’t blame me for being a sucker.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 14, 2007
Of all the things I never thought I’d be interesting in (vacations on the beach, camping in some nature preserve, going vegan, studying mathematical theory) well, Irish folky type bands top that list. I grew up in Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish, where every March the Catholic grammar school went Green (back when that meant something else entirely) and all the halls were plastered with posters of 4 men dressed as leprechauns and smiling gleefully over their respective instruments. This was my introduction to Irish bands.
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I was half-convinced I’d waken.
