On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published an essay by the playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, entitled “Charles Dickens Makes Me Want To Throw Up.” As it turns out, the essay was just one chapter in the forthcoming book, “David Mamet’s Physiological Responses To Classic Literature.” While we must wait for publication to fully understand precisely why Mr. Mamet takes issue with so many well known writers, a small selection of leaked chapter headings provide some sense of his thinking.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning makes me itch in places I can’t reach.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words yield the sensation of getting lemon juice in a paper cut.

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Samuel Beckett causes my elbow to feel like I just whacked my funny bone, the name of which incidentally is a complete misnomer because it hurts like hell.

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Mark Twain precipitates acid reflux if I read him after 7 pm.

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Leo Tolstoy makes me break out in hives and if anyone tells you calamine lotion helps they’re just plain wrong.

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Franz Kafka gives me a stuffy nose and you try finding a Neti Pot in the Hamptons in the middle of summer.

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Anton Chekhov causes me to go into anaphylactic shock and do you know how much those freaking Epi-pens cost?

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Reading Shakespeare aloud in college gave me tinnitus which is why I listen to music all the time.

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Jonathan Swift gives me chest gas that mimics the onset of a heart attack but isn’t and don’t tell me it’s just an anxiety attack because that simply pisses me off.

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Emily Dickinson prompts me to weep uncontrollably and I hate showing anything resembling human emotion other than disdain.

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Moliere gives me the hiccups and the only way to stop them is if someone sneaks up behind me and shouts, “Look, it’s Lindsay Crouse!”

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Ernest Hemingway soothes me. Like a man.

Nora Brigid Monahan in “Diva: Live From Hell” (Photo courtesy of DDPR)

I cannot claim that I was completely surprised. By the same token, I didn’t know exactly what to expect.

A press release first made me aware of Diva: Live From Hell, and I lingered on it longer than most I receive. The plot synopsis, of a high school drama kid doomed to Hell for his thespian transgressions while alive, ticked off some of the boxes that usually interest me, school theatre in particular. But thinking about the already heavy theatergoing schedule I keep in late March and April, I decided I’d better give it a pass. So many shows, so little time.

That was that, until a Facebook message popped up from Morgan Jenness, the highly regarded dramaturg, agent, teacher,  literary manager, activist, advisor, artist advocate and so much more. Was I planning to see Diva: Live From Hell, she wondered, because she thought I should see it. I replied, explaining that I’d thought about it, but decided to forego it. She wrote back to say I really should see it, and when Morgan gets emphatic like that, I know I’d be foolish not to take heed. I said that if she felt so strongly, I’d go. So while I began to ponder exactly what the deal was, I made a mental note to look to see when it was playing, having already deleted the press release.

When I awoke Monday morning to a Facebook wall post from Daniel Goldstein, who was directing the show, saying that I “may or may not be name-checked” in Diva: Live From Hell, I understood why Morgan was being so insistent. After all, Daniel couldn’t be posting versions of that message on the pages of all of his Facebook friends as a marketing ruse to sell tickets to the show, could he?

That’s how I found myself at Theatre for the New City on Monday night, with less than eight hours planning, having discovered that given my aforementioned busy schedule and the limited run of Diva, the only possible time I could attend was that same day. Normally, my theatergoing is planned out weeks in advance. Moviegoing is more spur of the moment for me.

So I might get some manner of shout out during the show, but of course I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know what it would be. It’s actually a terrible way to watch a show, waiting for a very specific yet indeterminate moment, but I tried to just relax and enjoy the proceedings. I settled in for the saga of Desmond Channing, played by Nora Brigid Monahan, who had also devised the show and written the book (music and lyrics are by Alexander Sage Oyen). Damned to recount his sordid tale of high school theatre rivalry, Desmond’s eternal cabaret is playing a lounge in the fiery pit; Roy Cohn, he tells us, is playing the big room.

(At this point I should give a lackadaisical spoiler alert, for those who find the prospect of hearing my name in a theatre production utterly thrilling. I imagine that if such a community exists, it’s extremely small, and perhaps might want to seek professional help.)

It wasn’t very far into the show, as Desmond relived his triumphant high school theatre career, that my name came up.

“I mean, I’m sure we all remember last year’s stunning production of “Flower Drum Song.” And not because of the controversy surrounding the casting! I’m still very hurt by Howard Sherman’s letter-writing campaign vilifying me for my portrayal of Wang Chi-Yang.”

OK, there it was. A good-natured ribbing of my advocacy regarding authenticity in racial casting and against practices such as yellowface. The audience laughed, but so far as I could tell, it was with the punchline, not at the mere mention of my name. I settled in to watch the rest of the show.

So imagine my surprise when only a bit later, I heard Desmond say the following:

“Auditions for the Fall Musicale are tomorrow. You just have to sing a Gilbert and Sullivan song. Wait a minute! What should I sing? Maybe “He is an Englishman.” No, everyone’ll do that… Or maybe something from “The Mikado”… No, can’t. Damn that Howard Sherman.”

Wow, I’m a recurring joke, albeit a highly esoteric one. But Monahan wasn’t quite done with me, as I discovered later in the show with the following interjection:

DALLAS: Alright, don’t make a big show. You know you’re the only student I let in the faculty room. Don’t abuse the privilege. Nice Louis Armstrong, by the way. If we hadn’t gotten in so much trouble for “Flower Drum Song,” next year I could’ve cast you as Porgy.

DESMOND: (Under his breath, furious) Sherman…

Because I was engaged in the show itself, my thoughts about these mentions didn’t really come until the lights went out and the curtain call began.

First thought: well, I guess people are registering the kind of advocacy I’ve been doing if it rises to the level of lampooning in an Off-Off-Broadway showcase.

Nora Brigid Monahan in “Diva: Live From Hell”

Second thought: I would never, NEVER, lead a campaign against any high school student. At the high school level, I try to be supportive. I might have had a few words for a teacher so clueless as Mr. Dallas.

Third thought: Wow, I got name-checked alongside Kevin Kline, Tovah Feldshuh and Patti LuPone, among many others. Of course, Seth Rudetsky appeared as himself via recording, a more prominent inclusion in Monahan’s imagined world. (Under my breath, furious) Rudetsky!

As I exited the theatre, I encountered Morgan Jenness, grinning widely, eager to hear what I thought. I said I’d had a good time and was amused to be part of the show. “But, I confided to Morgan, “I don’t think anyone in that theatre had any idea that I’m a real person. I’m just a fictional nemesis invented by Sean along with the other characters.”

“Oh, Howard,” she replied, “People know who you are. And after all, it’s a pretty insider show.”

“Insiders enjoy LuPone and Kline jokes,” I countered. “Mentions of me are downright obscure. As far as this audience knows, I’m a fiction.”

And so, for the next week and half at least, I will have my own form of immortality, embedded in the pages of a theatrical script and spoken aloud for presumably unwitting audiences. This joins my other brushes with exceedingly minor fame, including my guest appearance as a Cupcake Wars judge and my three-sentence role on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

But I thank Nora Monahan for giving me this little gift of recognition, and perhaps someone will see Diva: Live From Hell and laugh spontaneously and knowingly at the mention of my name (if I haven’t already spoiled the moment for those most likely to do so with this essay). And while my next two weeks are completely committed, perhaps I’ll have the chance to encounter Desmond Channing once again, be it in this life, or the afterlife.

Given that it was merely a stray amusement that became a popular offshoot of my photography hobby, “Times Square Weirdness” went worldwide this year with my discovery of Mike Hot-Pence (aka Glen Pannell), who used his resemblance to the Vice-President-elect to raise funds for progressive causes. Profiles everywhere from the Washington Post to People magazine to BuzzFeed all got their start on this site, and while the inspired idea was 100% Glen’s, it was my photos and blog post that caught the media’s attention – until such time as the media just keep feeding upon itself. And I should say that both Glen and his causes were really far from weird.

Most of the year was my usual array of motley Elmos and Elsas, Cookie Monsters and Hulks, Olafs and  Spider-Men. None are ever posed, none are paid, all are images captured when going from one place to another in Times Square, not the result of hours-long stakeouts. This is but a small sampling.

Enjoy – but please remember, all photos © 2016, Howard Sherman.

Elmo prepares to eat Iron Man

Minion and chill

Alexander Spider-Man, his name is Alexander Spider-Man

I’m not angry, I’m scared

The Cat in the Hat skulks back

Was it something Hulk said?

Pickle on the lam

Mike Hot-Pence

Creepy Anna

Olaf and the Elsa twins

Red, White and Blue

Ronnie

The Donald

The Hulk transforms

The hot clown

Inhumans of New York

It’s filthy down here

T. Rex takes selfie

Minion Captain America may cry

In case you missed this in 2015: Times Square Weirdness, A Photographic Portfolio.

All photos © 2016, Howard Sherman

Long after I stopped acting in school productions (which was November 1981 at the University of Pennsylvania, to be precise), my mother would periodically say how much she wished that my shows had been preserved on video, so she could see them again. It’s important to understand that my performances were in the pre-home video era, before every parent had a video camera to capture every precious moment, let alone a pocket-sized phone with a digital video camera within it. The idea of YouTube was unimaginable.

I always said to my mom that I was grateful that there’s no video of me as Will Parker, as Colonel Pickering, as Juror Number 3. Why? Because it allowed me, my friends and indeed my mom to recall the performances, and the productions, as the magical experiences they were at the time. With a recording, my performances might have been revealed as subpar and amateurish, especially as my own highly self-critical faculties developed.

But as I’ve told people about this over the years, I have omitted a key piece of information – though I’ve never lied. For the past nine years, hidden in the dark recesses of YouTube, there has been footage of teen-aged me in performance, during my senior year of high school, if I recall correctly. It is not, however, of me in a school show, or community theatre, but rather as the top-billed “star” of a short film made by my friend Dan Karlok, the one true moviemaking buff I recall encountering as a teen. It should be noted that when I say moviemaking, I mean on film, that forgotten material that had to be sent off and processed, edited by hand, and so on.

To further set the scene, I must explain that in 1980 when the short film below was made, today’s zombie obsession among horror buffs was still very much a cult, built largely upon just two movies: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. There was no The Walking Dead regularly serving up horror on basic cable (there was barely basic cable for most people), let alone the final installment of Romero’s trilogy, Day of the Dead, which came out in 1985, the same year as The Return of the Living Dead, Dan O’Bannon’s riff on Romero’s universe.

So coming way out ahead of the trend, Dan Karlok rallied a significant number of my high school cohorts (mostly drama and band kids), as well as the distinctive figure of his burly and bearded older brother Andy, for the mini-epic which he wrote, scored, edited, shot, and pretty much everything else too: Dawn of the Night of the Dead: The Musical, almost 25% of which is credits. If you don’t recognize me, I’m the guy in the Boy Scout shirt and top hat.

Now I should mention that for people perhaps aged 45 and up, this film may prompt some distant memory. That’s because through circumstances entirely unknown to me, Dan sold the film to the USA Network in its very early days, to use as interstitial material on its “Up All Night” and “Night Flight” schlock movie fests that ran on the weekends in the very wee hours back in the latter half of the 1980s. It also appeared a few times on Connecticut Public Television. Yes, you may have seen me once upon a time, but I forgive you for not remembering the face or name.

Dan has gone on to a career in film and television, having spent several years in the lighting department in the early days of Law & Order; he most recently directed and executive produced the documentary Joan Rivers: Exit Laughing. I don’t see him much, but outside of his film work, he can be spotted around the northeast fronting The Eugene Chrysler Band, a rockabilly combo.

Some may wonder why I haven’t revealed this bit of my performing past until now, since it has been hiding in plain sight since 2007 according to YouTube. Well, I just never thought it the right time. But after shamelessly launching myself back on stage for the first time in 35 years earlier this month, and having a blast doing so, I thought I might as well show all. While I suspect you may get a chuckle out of how ridiculous I am in this, keep in mind that it’s also a time capsule for me of many friends from my youth, some with whom I’m still in touch, and at least one who passed away a number of years ago.

I shall now be adding this to my “reel,” along with my appearances on Cupcake Wars and Law & Order: Special Vctims Unit. Agents, casting directors, producers and directors: I await your call. In the meantime, happy Throwback Thursday and Happy Halloween!

P.S. True zombie buffs may note that in Romero’s Day of the Dead, the zombie named Bub is played by a very fine actor named…Howard Sherman. That is his real name, but he now uses Sherman Howard professionally. No relation. And I got to the zombie game first!

P.P.S. I did one other film with Dan, a stop-motion animated film, the name of which I simply can’t recall. I voiced two characters: a James Bond-esque villain and one head of a particularly dimwitted two-headed dragon.The plot was so convoluted, that Dan typically had to explain the premise, in detail, before showing the film. Only Dan would know whether it has been lost to time, is in the filmic equivalent of witness protection, or lurks somewhere in YouTube, just beyond my reach.

Hobbes and Me

Years from now, newer converts to Hamilton fandom will marvel at how Lin-Manuel Miranda and Thomas Kail assembled such a notable cast. It will be viewed like Rent, like American Graffiti, a remarkable gathering of young talent that’s a tribute to those who managed to bring them together, including the casting team at Telsey + Company. It’s not that the Hamilton cast was entirely unknown, to be sure, but the acclaim for the project raised the public’s awareness of each and every one of them, regardless of what they had – or hadn’t – done before.

In the case of Daveed Diggs, who is surely one of the true breakout stars of Hamilton due to his Act 1 performance as Lafayette and Act 2 role of Thomas Jefferson, his primary prior recognition was as a rapper. But that’s not to say that Diggs hadn’t acted before. In one of the wonderful discoveries hiding in plain sight on YouTube, Diggs can be found in the eight-episode video series Hobbes and Me, playing Bill Watterson’s beloved philosophically named tiger from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

The decidedly low-budget series was created by Bay Area actor, rapper, writer and producer Rafael Casal in 2014; Casal also plays Watterson’s Calvin – though that name never appears on the videos. Neither does Diggs’s or, for that matter, Watterson’s. The “scripts” are eight selected original strips; the settings suggest they were filmed at Casal’s home. Diggs’s tiger costume is a tiger-patterned coat and striped pants seemingly out of a 1930s prison film.

Of course, as more people learn of Hobbes and Me, it’s possible that recognition may also prove the undoing of these charming novelties. It’s widely known that Watterson has never permitted any adaptation of his strips, live-action or animated. No doubt Hobbes and Me, which doesn’t even carry credits, is an unauthorized riff that, by both showing Calvin and Hobbes strips and utilizing their dialogue verbatim, is very likely on the wrong side of the copyright line.

But with Diggs’s star on the rapid rise, the eight episodes are a four and a half minute (in total) opportunity to see him before the glossy magazines and TV interviews came calling. Take a look while you can.

Incidentally, Hobbes and Me isn’t the only Casal-Diggs collaboration. There’s also a Star Trek riff called The Away Team, with Diggs playing a key role in Episode 2, “Boletus Frequencia.”

P.S. Casal’s website says he’s developing a musical called The Limp for Diggs. Stay tuned.

Cate Blanchett as half of “Simon & Kate”

In what will most assuredly give comfort to aspiring performers everywhere, you’ll be highly amused to know that Cate Blanchett began her career singing silly songs in the Melbourne University Law Revue show in her native Australia. “Weird Love Song” certainly lives up to its name in the “Red Faces” segment of the long-running Australian variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday (1971-1999). The segment itself seems to owe a great deal to The Gong Show or, for all we know about Australian television here in the United States, it could be the other way around. Here’s the celebrated Ms. Blanchett as part of the duo “Kate and Simon.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHREdO9-l5w

You may not care much for the song (“I wish I was your cigarette, smoked on through your lips/killing you softly with my tar and seeping out your nostrils”), but what’s undeniable is the vocal prowess of Ms. Blanchett. Perhaps when she makes her Broadway debut this fall in The Present, an adaptation of an early Chekhov play by her husband Andrew Upton, she’ll turn up at a few theatre benefits, or maybe at 54 Below, and reconnect with her singing roots. I think the kid has got potential. She could be big.

P.S. Ms. Blanchett’s off beat comic sensibility from her university days has not, apparently, been dulled by fame. Perhaps you missed her cameo in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s Hot Fuzz. There’s a tiny bit more than this clip. But not much.

Bottom line: keep your sense of humor at all times. But don’t listen to me. Take it from two-time Oscar winner and still undiscovered novelty song chanteuse Cate Blanchett.

Online or in print, headlines are meant to be grabbers. Just this week, I was taken aback by, and simply had to read,  The Independent’s “Radioactive wild boars rampaging around Fukushima nuclear site.” Honestly – how could I resist? A great headline need not always have a pun, such as the New York Daily News’s declaration against gun violence, “God Isn’t Fixing This.” Of course the classic of the genre is the New York Post’s “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”

Though I see journalism and criticism discussed and dissected six ways to Sunday in article upon article, blog after blog (and I’m often an avid participant), headlines tend not to be a significant part of the discussion of arts journalism. The “star rating” system gets a lot more attention, as of course do the reviews themselves. But headlines can have an enormous impact on your impression of a review, or a show; like stars, headlines may, for an enormous number of readers, be all they ever learn about a show.

Good headline writing is a talent, a craft, and that holds true in old-line print media or online. The Huffington Post seems to have made its fortune on headlines that promise more than they deliver, harking back to the best of true tabloid journalism, but dammit they make you look. None of us are immune to the lure of shrewd headline.

As someone who surveys the internet daily for news stories of theatrical interest, I marvel at the headlines I see, some clever, some mundane, some inadvertently hilarious. While there are fine editors of all stripes who contribute to headlines (the general public doesn’t realize that in many cases, the writer of the article has no participation in the process), there’s no question that at smaller outlets that still generate a lot of copy, the process of headline writing can become a bit rote. In the most absurd cases, I envision a lone editor, late at night in an empty newsroom, wracking their brain for copy that will fit both the story and the allotted space. I see this editor being responsible for headlines such as “‘Fences’ features all black-cast,” which I saw online two years ago, conveying a bit of information self-evident in 2014 to anyone familiar with August Wilson’s 1987 play.

My imagined editor seems to work on a lot of theatre reviews but apparently doesn’t go to a lot of theatre, and so I muse upon headlines I suspect most of us would not want to see; endless alliteration, bad puns, inadvertently risqué or even offensive juxtapositions pouring from a sleep-deprived mind, one that may have only read the review cursorily. Consequently, here’s a selection of 25 headlines I created for a range of plays and musicals – all to accompany positive reviews, as going negative is too easy – with the hope that it will make its way to arts copy desks across the country as samples of what not to do.  But I can assure you that these are very close to the reality I see daily.

• Where’s the beef? Steer yourself to prime AMERICAN BUFFALO
• Don’t paws, run to (litter) box office: CAT on TIN ROOF will have you feline HOT
• Fine end to CORIOLANUS, but you may be bummed out
• Insane fun to be had at nutty CRAZY FOR YOU
• Miller spins tight-knit yarn about SALESMAN’s DEATH
• Piercing EQUUS quiets the neigh-sayers
• No woe at MOE show, so grab FIVE GUYS and go, shmoe
• Kernel of corporal punishment makes LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE generally great
• LITTLE WHOREHOUSE turns tricks into trade, hooks audiences to happy ending
• Compelling climax in THE ICEMAN COMETH
• You’ll want to preserve JELLY’S LAST JAM
• No need to hope for charity at LEAP OF FAITH
• NIGHT time is the right time for Sondheim’s MUSIC
• Oh, my: THE LYONS is a tiger, bears seeing
• Missed I and II? You’ll still enjoy MADNESS OF GEORGE III
• MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM is tops
• M. BUTTERFLY emerges in unexpected, satisfying ways
• Start spreading the NEWSIES
• NORMAN’s CONQUESTS make him Attila the Fun
• ONE MAN, TWO GUVS: three cheers four you — five stars
• Norris’ PAIN AND THE ITCH receives critical an-ointment
• Local troupe puts impressive PRIVATES ON PARADE
• Current RAISIN IN THE SUN prunes away time’s overgrown vines
• There’s no need to fear, TOPDOG/UNDERDOG is here
• Yes VIRGINIA, Albee’s foxy WOOLF blows the house in

I will close by quoting a long-remembered headline, 100% accurate, that accompanied a glowing review for a show I worked on once upon a time: “Crawl Over Ground Glass to See This Show.” Enticing, huh? Truth can be stranger than fiction.

This is a slightly revised version of a post originally published in 2012, under the dreadful headline, “Much Read Heads Can Put Chorus In Line Or Punch ‘Em Out.” I have no idea what I was thinking. Needless to say, no one read it.

My memory of the moment is quite vivid, if inevitably inexact. It happened 41 years ago, in the early afternoon, in Mrs. Winkler’s seventh grade science class at Amity Junior High School, as we were doing a “unit” on Ecology. In order to brighten our study of the physical environment, Mrs. Winkler announced one day at the start of class that she wanted to play us a song, and proceeded to put a black vinyl disc on the industrial weight turntable, the cover of which doubled as a speaker. The song she played was a savagely funny cri de coeur about how America’s cities and resources had been ruined by the scourge of pollution, from the perspective of a someone warning a foreign visitor about coming to America.

That was the day I first heard, and heard of, Tom Lehrer.

Not long thereafter, at a garage sale, I would discover a 10 inch, 33 rpm record, “Songs by Tom Lehrer” (on Lehrer Records), which I immediately seized and paid, I imagine, 25 cents to possess. Lehrer joined Allan Sherman and Stan Freberg among the small coterie of singing comedians to whom I became devoted, committing their songs to memory and happily singing them acapella for friends who had no earthly idea where I’d found these strange but funny tunes. After all, Sherman died in 1973, Freberg had shifted from comedy into advertising, and Lehrer’s U.S. fame had peaked on That Was The Week That Was, a short-lived TV precursor to The Daily Show back in 1964 (where he once took on the decimal system on the original British version of the show).

While Lehrer was a genuinely formative influence, who is rarely far from my mind, I think of him specially today because April 9, 2016 marks his 88^th birthday. With Sherman gone for than 40 years and Freberg having passed just last year, Lehrer is the last surviving member of my own sung comedy superteam, and while it’s quite clear that there is nothing Lehrer would like less than to be celebrated for work he largely stopped doing 50 years ago (this BuzzFeed piece from two years ago explains), and even further back, it’s hard to restrain oneself.

This, of course, is the challenge of being a Tom Lehrer fan. While much of the work is evergreen, the majority of it was written in the 1950s and first half of the 60s, and Lehrer largely stopped performing by the time 1970s rolled around. Some have written that Lehrer’s withdrawal from performance was because he is – as a mathematician by training and primary trade – a perfectionist, and that he took no pleasure from concerts because he was determined to reproduce his recordings. Others have suggested that what was daring and ribald in the 50s ran smack against the counterculture of the late 60s, which Lehrer didn’t care for.

In any event, to the dismay of fans of funny, topical songs, Lehrer refocused himself on teaching. The result for comedy geeks was that he became, almost, our J.D. Salinger. Although he hid in plain sight, his students knew better than to discuss his performing fame; though almost no new work appeared, it was clear that he had not shunned his piano and verbal repartee, as the occasional song slipped out, or the odd public appearance. He gave a rare interview to National Public Radio in 1979; he spoke with The New York Times in 2000. Perhaps his last burst of general public fame came when the producer Cameron Mackintosh brought the musical revue Tomfoolery, comprised of Lehrer’s songs, to the stage in London and later New York. But that was in the early 1980s, almost two generations ago now, so Lehrer fans can even be nostalgic for that moment of nostalgia.

Not all of Lehrer’s material still plays today: in this era when space exploration has been minimized, a song about early rocket scientist Werner von Braun is hardly a source of laughter; post-Cold War, a cowboy crooning about the Atomic Energy Commission is perhaps too obscure. But a jazzy pop tune about Oedipus Rex can still crack up the college crowd, and anyone old enough to know of masochism is sure to find humor in a tango celebrating sexual gratification through pain. On the first day of spring each year, the idea of ridding our cities of the overpopulation of pigeons can still resonate. The NRA probably still doesn’t care for a hunting song about an inept marksman. Sexually transmitted diseases, sad to say, are perennial. And while National Brotherhood Week may be gone, a song about that effort to heal cultural rifts still stings.

It may be the very last thing he wants, but today I’ll place a candle in a cupcake and wish for the continued health of Tom Lehrer, hoping, as I do every day, that he might one day be revealed to have been writing songs all this time, and shares them with us, even if not in performance, then at least as sheet music, the better to celebrate him with. Even if he doesn’t want us to do so.

P.S. Did I mention that Lehrer went to summer camp with Stephen Sondheim? Just wanted to toss that in. The verbal dexterity on the swim team that summer must have been quite something.

*   *   *

Whether you’re a Lehrer devotee or newly curious, I recommend watching this mid-60s live show from Copenhagen, in which he performs many of his best known songs for a relatively reserved college crowd.

While the Copenhagen concert has yielded an array of YouTube clips, much lesser seen is a short performance Lehrer gave for one of his teaching colleagues, stocked with an array of unrecorded songs, heavy on mathematics humor.

Strictly for the fans, here’s a decidedly odd industrial clip of Lehrer singing the praises of a new Dodge car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3htMuJhz5Y

If you’d like to introduce younger kids to Lehrer, paving the way for them to discover his more transgressive work when they get older, here’s a bit of educational material from TV’s The Electric Company.

While “cover” versions of Tom Lehrer tunes are rare, here’s the late British comic Marty Feldman having his way with “The Vatican Rag.”

Of course, there’s also Daniel Radcliffe singing “The Element Song.”

I’ll wrap this up with what may be one of Lehrer’s last released songs to date, which is simply the best Hannukah song ever written.

The rise of internet culture has caused many shifts in how we consume information, with one of the more amusing side benefits being the rise of the fictional Twitter user. Disregarding spambots, the anonymity that comes so easily online has birthed such figures as @BronxZoosCobra and @ElBloombito, to name but two. In the theatre realm, the sunny cheerleading of @BroadwayGirlNYC has found adherents, but the sharper tongues (or typing) of @WestEndProducer and @Actor_Friend have launched them into real world publishing, within weeks of each other.

For those who haven’t been following them, a quick précis. West End Producer is, ostensibly, an individual on the production side of theatre in England, whose dishy asides about every aspect of the business always conclude with the simultaneously charming and condescending #dear. I have struck up a Twitter acquaintance with this person, we’ve shared a few jokes and they sent me a signed copy of their book. I’ve noticed their unwavering dedication to chronicling TV talent competitions as they air on weekend evenings (which can be bewildering, since the shows don’t play in the US) and just learned of a mutual passion for Sherlock, but this TV fixation doesn’t suggest someone at the country homes of those with bold faced names on the weekend. I’m newer to Actor Friend, whose full nom de tweet is Annoying Actor Friend, but the online persona is that of a snarky actor, seemingly more of a dedicated gypsy than an above-the-title star. While I won’t guess at gender (though WEP’s appearances in a latex mask disguise would indicate male, and in a  book blurb, one writer suggests AF is female), I’d hazard that AF is in their 20s while WEP is likely 30ish (or more).

In their books Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Acting But Were Afraid To Ask, Dear (Nick Hern Books, £10.99) and #SoBlessed: The Annoying Actor Friend’s Guide To Werking in Show Business (CreateSpace, $13.99), WEP and AF dispense pearls of wisdom in their trademark styles, freed from the chains of 140 characters at a time.  Early in each book, one gets the full force of their characters:

“Casting Directors are usually very nice people who like drinking far too much alcohol, and mostly during the day. The ones that don’t drink usually have other habits, which can’t be discussed here – but often end in them being discovered on a bench outside Waterloo Station at 5 a.m.”  – West End Producer

“Even after you’ve questionably noted your music, nervously mumbled some directions, and shakily clapped out a tempo, there will be an accompanist who has no effing clue how to play your Jason Robert Brown song. Seriously though – whenever I don’t get a callback, I usually find a way to blame the accompanist. It doesn’t matter if they played my audition flawlessly. It’s still their fault.”  – Annoying Actor Friend

“A serious actor has to approach acting in a serious way. This can be achieved by using various methods. One of the easiest ways is by not smiling – particularly if you don’t have good teeth. A serious actor should always save his smile for special occasions. However, this does not mean you can’t smirk. Smirking and smiling are two very different things indeed.”  – West End Producer

“As a performer, Annoying Actor Internet Law requires you to read anonymous online opinions about you, take them personally, and then complain about how all those people on theatre message boards are stupid, even though their comments are secretly murdering you from the inside out.”  – Annoying Actor Friend

Now you might imagine that an entire book of this arch tone would grow tiresome, let alone two, and I’d readily agree with you. That’s where both of these books turn out to be surprises. #SoBlessed, while the thinner of the pair, both literally and figuratively, pretty much drops all pretense of a character in one of its longer chapters, “On The Road,” which deals with touring. Offering a pointed critique of touring conditions and contracts, AF gets into some detail about the challenges of an actor’s life on tour. AF’s advocacy regarding compensation has taken on even greater urgency among some members of Actors Equity, with the full Twitter support and perhaps instigation of AF, has raised a stir about the pay structure of touring agreements over the holidays.

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Acting is more comprehensive than its title suggests, ranging over many fields in the theatre, including producing itself. While the occasional Britishism may befuddle the less worldly reader, the advice dispensed among the punchlines is in fact utterly practical, simply delivered in a tone unlikely to be heard in classrooms at Yale or the Tisch School. “When you audition,” observes WEP, “there’s always a moment when you’re perfect for the role. It’s the moment before you come through the door.” WEP also wraps up the book by enumerating concerns that face the theatre, going beyond flippant remarks about Andrew Lloyd Webber to touch upon rising ticket prices, competition from the electronic media and the need for everyone in theatre “to be braver.”

They may have found their fame in the briefest of missives and gained followings with their dark and knowing wit, but in the end West End Producer and Annoying Actor Friend are both passionately dedicated to the theatre, doling out genuine wisdom and information with nearly every wisecrack. If one is on a budget and has to choose between the books, I give the edge to WEP, even though those in the US have to wait for its release here in the spring via TCG (it seemed to be a favored holiday gift in the UK, judging by my Twitter feed). But both make for irreverent supplements to more staid but perhaps equally inspiring books in theatre. And they are not annoying. Not annoying at all, dear.

Volume 1 of Fantagraphics’
The Complete Peanuts

In one of his best known stories, “Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54′ N, Longitude 77° 00′ 13″ W,” the science fiction and fantasy author Harlan Ellison tells of a man who has lost his soul and who embarks on a metaphysical journey inside himself to find it again. At the end of his adventure he finds (partial spoiler alert) a bit of long forgotten pop culture ephemera.

I never need to go on the journey taken by Ellison’s protagonist, because while I know my soul is more complex than any single touchstone, I am certain of what looms largest inside the innermost me. That’s because it also happens to sit, at 18 volumes and counting, on the shelves across from where I write. I refer to “The Complete Peanuts,” an ongoing series of hardcover reprints from Fantagraphics of every “Peanuts” cartoon drawn by Charles M. Schulz, which still has several years to go before it is fully complete. Between those covers are perhaps the single greatest influence on me from age five to 15, and in many ways both the formation and reflection of my psyche.

A relatively early “cast” of Peanuts

Since I was born in the early 60s, “Peanuts” was already established by the time I began reading the comics page of the local newspaper. Thanks to tag sales and paperback reprints, I was able to work my way back to the strip’s earliest years without any difficulty.

Remarkably for a comic so steeped in Schulz’s own Midwestern childhood decades earlier, the Peanuts were a late 60s-early 70s phenomenon, as TV specials, a long-running musical and theatrical films spread the gospel of Charlie Brown and company (there was even a book called The Gospel According to Peanuts). Both the establishment and the bourgeoning counterculture found something they could share in Peanuts, and while there was surely a massive marketing campaign run by The Man, resulting in Happiness is a Warm Puppy taking  up permanent residence at cash registers everywhere, you could also find Peanuts-emblazoned merchandise in progressive record stores too, with Snoopy posters (maybe even some in blacklight-sensitive colors) on the walls behind the bong display cases.

I’ve only read the first volume or two of the collected works, even though I buy them as they’re published; they seem to call for a certain kind of lazy Sunday afternoon, perhaps in a hammock, that one rarely finds in Manhattan life. Even those earliest strips remain familiar; they don’t trigger a forgotten memory like a random madeleine, but merely jog my brain where snapshots of the strips reside barely out of reach, filed, not faded. While the digital transition continues apace, I’m putting these books aside to be read by me in two or three decades, though youthful visitors with clean hands will be welcome to page through them in the meantime.

Here’s the World War I
Flying Ace, high over
France…

While a biography has already emerged which links, in some cases unfavorably, Schulz’s own life with that of his characters, I have no particular interest in the artist’s role as a man, a husband, or father. As much as possible, I want to retain that childhood innocence where the work simply exists, that time before we fully realize that an actual person has created these things we read.

Then, as now, Peanuts is a marvel. The main characters are archetypes: the ever aspiring but never succeeding Charlie Brown, the take-no-prisoners Lucy, the contemplative Linus, the artistically single-minded Schroeder, the free-spirited and soulful Snoopy. It’s worth noting that for all of the other characters Schultz created, these five were the core of the strip; Violet, Patty, Shermy, Frieda, Franklin, Pig Pen, Woodstock, Spike and so many others were always supporting players. Schroeder even ran out of steam after a while, ceding his lead position to both Sally and Peppermint Patty.

But for me, Peanuts was all about Charlie Brown and Snoopy – the former being the person I saw myself as, the latter being the personification of who I hoped to be. I never could kick a football, even if it wasn’t snatched away from me; I couldn’t throw or hit a baseball; the little red headed girl (or blonde or brunette) would barely notice me, let alone return my affection. I couldn’t let go of that enough to enjoy the simple pleasures of a good meal (suppertime!) or an imaginative foray into dark territory. No Red Barons for me – too scary.  Even as I achieved academically, even as I began to gather a group of friends with whom I am close four decades later, I always felt like the kid who got a rock in his Halloween candy, the kid laying flat on his back, staring at the sky, wondering why he’d fallen for the same ridicule yet again.

Flyer for Amity Junior High School’s 1977
You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown

Peanuts even provided my entryway into theatre. The first time I can recall performing publicly, I played the title role in a significantly truncated and surely unauthorized presentation of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown at my day camp at age six or seven; in ninth grade, in the first musical ever produced at my junior high, I played Snoopy in the complete show, taking on the persona to which I aspired. I can’t remember auditioning for either engagement, but perhaps there’s something to be gleaned from the fact that while in my single digits, others saw me as I saw myself, while perhaps seven years later I could assume (or had assumed) a more exuberant façade.

I muse on my one-time obsession and future comfort because after decades of ever-less-inspired television specials, I read last week that the Peanuts characters will soon return to the big screen…in 3D rendered images and 3D projection. I will stop short of calling this sacrilege, because, as I say, the original work remains intact. But I worry about Peanuts going the way of Alvin and the Chipmunks, Underdog or Rocky and Bullwinkle, other childhood treats who proved to have less dimension when a third was added. Peanuts, like The Simpsons, have always looked vaguely creepy when fully modeled; they are best suited for the two-dimensions of the page precisely because they function in an isolated world wholly their own and their distinctive features can seem monstrous when extrapolated into something resembling reality. The makers of the stage musical intuited that immediately, which is why there are no oversized heads or dog costumes in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

I am not a die-hard collector of memorabilia; there is no “Peanuts room” filled with collectibles in my apartment. But my bookshelves belie my interests. Those Peanuts volumes share space with the complete works of Berkeley Breathed (“Bloom County” and its successors), I’m working out a justification for buying the multi-volume hardcover compendium of “Calvin and Hobbes,” and I should probably start squirreling away funds for the as yet unannounced but hopefully forthcoming complete “Doonesbury.”

I will spend hundred of dollars on these books because I want to hold them in my hands the way I did when I first read them, not scroll through them on a screen. “Doonesbury” is and will be the chronicle of American life in my era (conveniently beginning in New Haven when I was growing up there). But Peanuts – which ended just before Schultz died in 2000 – will be the constant reminder of my childhood, and in some ways the record of it as well, the philosophy, the psychology and the often rueful humor that gave birth to me as I am today, burrowed deep inside my brain and my heart.