Spelling Ukulele

Like many people today, Wally Przbylski works on a computer. For Wally, a computer looks like a typewriter attached to a television screen. It's a big improvement, however, over the Royal typewriter he worked on in the Fifties before a job change in the Sixties forced him to move to an IBM Selectric. As an editor, he was always on deadline and speed was important. 

In the Eighties, a defense contractor hired Wally and he learned to edit on a Wang computer. His job was to copyedit technical prose written by engineers. The engineers wrote proposals to win contracts from the government. From Wally's point of view, the engineers were a strange lot.  

The company's specialty was building missiles "to keep America safe," as Wally pointed out to his neighbors. At that time the company already had a missile they could put through then-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's bedroom window. The problem was, Gaddafi slept in a different domicile every night. He was said to have many wives. A married man himself, Wally understood how separate domiciles might help to keep the peace in an extended family. 

Wally was one of a small group of editors in this company of engineers. The nicest thing an engineer might call an editor was a "wordsmith" but editors were called "erasers" as well. 

The engineers considered the editors unnecessary outsiders hired to mess with their copy before it was collated in notebooks, boxed up, put on a plane and sent to the Defense Department where proposals from different contractors were evaluated. Eventually contracts would be awarded. And if Wally's company won one of them, ecstasy ruled for half an hour. He figured half an hour was about as long as the engineers would waste on ecstasy.

"And what's with their pocket protectors," Wally asked another editor during a coffee break. "Every engineer has a pocket protector and wears a short-sleeved white shirt with a tie too short. Every pocket protector has a rainbow of different colored pens. How many pens do you need? And they think we're weird!"  

Brilliant in math and science, the engineers had a problem writing grammatically correct sentences. Punctuation was a mystery to many of them and spelling was as well.  Most of them didn't realize they had this deficiency. In fact, Wally told his wife one night that he didn't think these engineers thought they had any deficiencies. 

"I don't think there's in introspective one in the bunch," Wally said. "Their minds are lost in math and science. Brilliant men but tough to work with if you aren't one of them." 

Wally was a good editor whether the engineers appreciated that or not. He was quick to spot misspelled words and faulty punctuation. And he excelled at fixing garbled sentences the engineers had cast in the passive voice. 

Wally's job was to install the active voice in their copy without changing the meaning of the text. This was not easy for an ignoramus in technology to do but Wally managed to do the job well. He knew the engineers liked the passive voice but the marketing department knew the active voice would help sell a missile system to the government.

"What do you know about science?" a miffed engineer asked Wally one day after accusing him of "raping" his copy. 

"Statutory rape," Wally said. "You gave it to me."

"I had to give to you," the engineer said. "It was perfectly fine the way I wrote it."

That's when Wally asked him if he could spell ukulele.

"Spell what?"

"Ukulele," Wally said.

The engineer sputtered a bit and then actually came close to spelling it before stomping back to his desk. He missed by one letter--the "u" that comes after the "k."

"That's the letter they all miss," Wally told his wife that night. "They never get it right."

Following other derisive comments that would occur occasionally about his editing, Wally made it a practice to ask every vituperative engineer to spell ukulele. Almost to a man none of them could. The engineers were all male in those days since everyone knew that women typed well, didn't particularly like math or science, but made excellent coffee. 

It was this job as a wordsmith in a company of engineers that led Wally to lay down the law with his daughters.

"Never marry a man who can't spell ukulele," he told them one day when both were still in the Girl Scouts, selling cookies.

Wally even told his wife that if one of his daughters ever wanted to marry an engineer, he would have her deported to Slovenia. Not that there was anything wrong with Slovenia but he knew no daughter of his would like it there. Not enough nice places to shop. Two engineers at his company were Slovenes and they complained inordinately about the lack of good retail outlets in their country.

Despite all of Wally's warnings, one daughter grew up and married a man who couldn't spell ukulele. As Wally points out to strangers now, she's divorced with a flock of kids who are great in math but abysmal in English. She may even have lupus and Wally suspects she might have caught this non-contagious disease from her former husband. 

"At least he wasn't an engineer," Wally often reminds his wife. 

The other daughter, however, followed Wally's advice. She is married to a poet who was able to spell ukulele. Wally asked the young man to spell the word when he came to the house to ask for the girl's hand in marriage. Wally gave his permission and is proud that the couple's seven children won spelling bees in grammar school but never got past algebra in high school. Each child would warn the sibling next in line about the dangers of geometry. 

Wally is a somewhat happy man these days as retirement looms. Not one of his grandchildren so far has shown any interest in becoming an engineer. And just the other day, the youngest one asked him to teach her how to play the ukulele. Wally agreed but first he will have to take lessons. After all, the girl is only seven but already she can spell ukulele. 

Donal Mahoney 

        

Caucus at the Parking Meter

For years Rocky’s Diner had always done a great business for breakfast and lunch but his dinner business had fallen off recently as folks moved to the suburbs, got married, died or simply went elsewhere to eat. He thought about closing early but he had a small cadre of elderly men, many of whom had been his customers for two or three meals a day, and Rocky didn’t know where else they might go to eat. They were all single now for different reasons—divorced, widowed, never married or deserted by a wife who had become fed up. Most were in their late 70s and early 80s and not renowned for their civility. They were a crotchety bunch but Rocky liked them all. He himself was in his late 60s, happily married, and didn’t have to worry about money, thanks in large part to loyal customers like these elderly men, some of whom had been eating at his diner for decades. 

Many of them would arrive for dinner—or supper, as most of them called it--at 6 p.m., their unofficial appointed hour for the last meal of the day, and depending on their mood, they would either take a stool alone at the counter or pile into one of the red vinyl booths. In a booth, they hoped to be joined by others who might also have spent the day alone, watching television, reading the obituaries or maybe playing solitaire.

Conversation in the booths ran the gamut from politics to religion to dead wives and ex-wives to girls they should have or shouldn’t have married. Occasionally, the conversation in one booth would be joined by those in the booth behind, in front of or across from that particular booth. If the weather was good, sometimes the conversation would spill out onto the street afterward where, weather permitting, the men would gather around a parking meter and continue their caucus. 

It was on just such an evening in spring while the caucus at the parking meter was in full swing that an attractive young lady walked by, heels clicking, skirt swaying, and all of the men paused and assessed her with murmurs of appreciation. She was, they all agreed, a very nice young lady. 

“I remember years ago dating a girl like that,” said Harry, “and she gave me nothing but heartache. Back then, you’d have to marry them. They didn’t give it away. Thank God I married Mildred instead. She caused me no heartache and I hope to God she’s enjoying heaven. She’s been there for about 10 years now. I still miss her oxtail soup."

Truth be told, Harry may have been the only one at the parking meter who had been happily married. Three of them had gone through difficult divorces decades ago and still cursed their former wives when their aches and pains were worse than usual. Another man had lived through a tortuous marriage but for religious reasons never considered divorce. His wife finally died and he forced himself to go to the funeral. There was also a bachelor in the group, 78 years old, who prided himself on the number of women he had sampled over the years without ever buying the cake.

“I’m glad I never married,” said Jimbo. “I enjoyed most of the women I dated and they seemed to enjoy me but I never found one I wanted to spend my life with, though it was difficult at times to fight them off. Every one of them wanted to get married. Don’t let a woman tell you size doesn’t matter. I’m proof positive it does.”

Most of the other men over the years had heard Jimbo’s tales of sexual prowess and they didn’t want to get him started again. But Clarence was relatively new to the group and had always wondered if it was his limitations as a lover that had caused his problems. He wondered what Jimbo had that he didn’t. His wife had never complained about their love-making but she may have been too busy complaining about everything else. So he decided to ask Jimbo why he had it so good.

“Jimbo, you mean all those women wanted to marry you because of the size of it. I’m not small but what are we talking about here, 12 inches?”

“Clarence, I don’t want to brag but I remember one woman who insisted I do something to make certain that when we went out, no one would notice if I had a spontaneous reaction. She was afraid if I saw another attractive woman, it might pop up and everyone in the restaurant would notice. So to make her happy I taped it all the way down my leg and stuck the head of it in my sock. I always wore socks with an elastic band as an extra precaution. I wanted to make sure nothing inappropriate happened. I almost married that woman because she was better than the others at taking off the tape when we got home.”

The other men had all heard Jimbo’s story before and kept a straight face while he told it because they wanted to see Clarence’s reaction. They were more than a little surprised when he finally spoke.

“I hope it wasn’t duct tape, Jimbo,” he said, “because that would have hurt like hell when she pulled it off.”

Donal Mahoney

An interesting phenomenon of the 1970s was the byproduct of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the culture war. We sent them rock and roll groups and Hollywood films. They sent us the Kirov Ballet and the Moscow Art Theater. Culture in the United States exists on many levels. Except for middle class adventurers who will seek the new, the experimental, the classics, wealth dominates all arenas, save theater. Opera, ballet, classical music, are funded by government and private donors. They are invariably not-fot-profit endeavors, whose mission is to provide the highest quality of performance achievable.

           The peculiar nature of fine art is so removed from performance requirements that it exists in its own unique plane. Only the rich can afford to buy masterworks, though the public can visit well stocked art museums and see fine art. The problem is that most of the public have no idea what they’re looking at, evinced by their rapid transit through display galleries. The public is invariably too intimidated to go into commercial art galleries, a condition encouraged by pretentious art gallery personnel, who assume the public are not customers, ergo of no interest. It’s even more difficult for the artists. Once it took a long time to become an old master. Warhol, Lichtenstein and a few others did it in record time, their paintings commanding multi-millions, pressuring art students, who may not be taught that there is room at the top for only a fortunate few.

           Theater is by far the strangest artistic endeavor. Broadway productions are a financial venture that are only incidentally exercises in art. The cost of a Broadway production is so high that the goal is to produce a hit that will run a long time, repay the investors, then make a profit. Obviously this is not an arena for experimentation. Production values are generally high, but content, designed to reach mass audiences, tends to become safer and safer, the more production costs soar. The bread, butter and entrées of Broadway are musical theater. The most successful productions are revivals and formula stories.

           Off-Broadway production costs are becoming increasingly expensive, so a capital investment is required to present a play that must earn money, or suffer a financial loss that ends the show. Regional theater must cater to its subscription audience, a graying group, not readily replaceable, less and less susceptible to challenging drama.. Off-Off Broadway is usually a yell-in, or so sloppy that only Mommas love their actor sons and daughters. There are a few good small theaters that try their best to produce entertaining work, but their audience is also aging rapidly. At a recent Saturday night performance of a classic, at a respectable small theater, the house was only ¾s full and the average age was 65. American theater suborned by middle of the road university theater department mentalities, correlated by the deleterious products of the superficial showcase system, has further fallen victim to increasingly visual innovation in tvs, nourished by cable and the internet, all these formats combining to obsolete theater.

 

Gary Beck

The history of theater in America is hardly awe inspiring. Unlike other cultures that produced great playwrights, our brief flare with O'Neill, followed by Miller and Williams, will probably not resonate through the ages. How can we expect these fine writers to last, when our greatest, O'Neill, is dismissed by critics for his obsolete language. This from pettifoggers who revere Shakespeare, yet don't understand 20 to 30% of his language! Theater is the most accessible of the performing arts, demonstrated by the numbers of Broadway theaters that tract hundreds of thousands annually. Opera, ballet and classical music appeal to limited audiences, and cannot become mainstream without audiences learning enough to comprehend what they are attending. Then they have to develop the requisite taste to appreciate what is not a common core in our texting society.

Despite the dim future of theater as audiences age and new audiences don't emerge to take their place, escalating ticket prices that prevent exposure to disadvantaged populations who could participate someday, if encouraged, more glamorous, hi-tech film, tv, video games, there is still an appeal in live theater that attracts people. Even as the classics fade from the repertory, musical theater still attracts huge audiences. There is no equivalent in less demanding opera or ballet. Musical theater could flourish another ten years, then the cost of production and technical advances in TV will erode the economic base that nourishes dozens of Broadway houses that are not suitable for other applications, except demolishment and replacement with condo-hotels.

Gary Beck

In retrospect, there were many reasons for my decision to form a classical company. I loved the classics, especially on the grand scale like Hamlet and Agamemnon. Yet the translations of the Greek plays were ponderous, stilted and almost as difficult to read as to produce on the stage. I visualized performances that would thrill the audience with the heightened passion of great tragedy. This was what I wanted to work for. But I knew that theater tragedy, especially with young actors lacking the requisite skills, would not reach audiences that no longer brought a willingness to actively respond to the play. They have been conditioned to sit back, relax and spectate, just the way they go to a movie. Theater is an emotional transaction between actors and audience, mandating participation between both sides. Nevertheless, my ambition was to involve audiences in the passion of the play.

Even while starting this Quixotic quest, part of me knew the chances of attaining my goals were not high. I neglected to bring an appropriate gift to the Oracle of Delphi, and did not perceive unfavorable omens. The irony was I never directed a classic. My experience, in several countries, was invariably social issue drama. I had an inherent prejudice against comedy, considering it crude, vulgar or too clever. So I opted to build the company doing comedy first, so

The pain of early failure would not be an anguish. The thought of inflicting tragedy on the audience with an unprepared company was abhorrent, but somehow making the audience suffer through the learning process of comedy was more tolerable.

I realized I had to master many new skills to do classical comedy, so I decided to recruit a number of small performing groups once we got a theater, including a modern ballet co., a modern dance co., a clown co., a mime co., a recent group of graduates who wanted to do a show together, and some scruffy musicians I named the Dehydrated Band. ( I think they could read and write, but they lacked many cognitive skills. One of them asked why they were the Dehydrated Band and I replied,' you just add water and mix'. I named them as a joke and didn't think it meant anything, but he seemed to get it. Rock musicians and classical musicians come from different planets). The idea of these disparate groups, congealing in one place considering the vast gulf between the sensitive ballerinas and the unwashed musicians, was perhaps a bit perverse, but definitely amusing. I planned to do some writing, directing and choreography with all of them except the band from another planet, whose only redeeming value would be if I could get them to play...What?...for the other groups. This had to be one of the strangest undertakings

In what had so far been my strange life.

Gary Beck

Unless you've worked with the actors before, auditions are the standard recruiting process. To a director obsessed with creating stage beauty, this is an excruciating experience. Off-Off Broadway auditioners include recent college graduates with B.A.s in theater arts, though it have no idea what they spent 4 years doing. They don't know plays, theater history, minimal skills and fervently believe they worked hard in college. They are mostly middle class with no concept of the original nature of the actor, a low life with upper class mobility. These hot house blossoms do not understand that performing serious theater is done with life and death like intensity, but the audience should only see the result, not the struggle. I often felt that if I sent out a press-gang, the recruiting method of the British Empire in the 18th century, I had as much chance of finding capable bodies,
Then there were the retreads, the ex-insurance company executives who retired and suddenly wanted to be actors, after 20 years of misleading the public about their benefits. A few were suitable for institutional tv ads, but classical theater? It takes a long time for the true actor to develop his/her craft. These characters who last week were conning joe client on the golf course, now want to do Shakespeare. It's ironic that many of them are bright, competent people in their other life, but they're attempting a profession that though undisciplined compared to ballet, or classical music, nevertheless still has requirements that take years to master. Their redeeming virtue is unlike the middle class kiddies, they seldom snivel.
The most promising pool of talent has the misfits, the neglected, the rejected, all the types that don't fit in to the college trained directors,who mostly seek the college trained actors they were exposed to at good old Shelter U. But these oddballs are the most deceptive, since many of them have been justifiably rejected due to unacceptable qualities. Yet this is where I hoped to find the born actor who hadn't fit in anywhere else.
It's curious to consider the nature of theater historically. The Ancient Greek theater wasn't theater at all, but a social-religious enactment more similar to the Christian mass, then Hamlet. The playwrights were distinguished citizens. Aeschylus fought at the battle of Marathon, that saved Greece from the Persian invasion. But the actors were unknown amateurs. Who performed once a year in the Thesmophoriazeusae, a 4 day festival, 3 days of tragedy, 1 day of comedy. The Roman theater wasgenerally performed by upper class amateurs for the amusement of their peers. It wasn't until the Commedia actors earned their living by their craft in 16th century Italy and France, that professional theater evolved. Commedia actors did high and low comedy, tragedy, dance, that delighted the audience, or they didn't get paid, didn't eat. Mommy and Daddy didn't subsidize them. They didn't work as waiters. It was a mystery in the television age how to find actors willing to exert the effort to earn a living by the sweat of their brows. Did these people still exist in an era of low cultural values, but high cultural pretensions?

Gary Beck