The lyrics easily and inevitably slip into simple rhymes, or take clever twists that go off on themselves in witty self-satire, or,or don’t matter a hoot: “ramma ramma lamma ka dingity ding da dag..” and so on. You don’t have to get real cerebral about it.

And the percussion/tenor saxes (Quentin Cohen and Jonathan Decicio /Nick Hasty) driven band led by Tony D’Anna placed high up and upstage is relentless, completely in charge of the momentum. This is a very exceptional bunch of musicians, talent and energy that exemplifies the production as a whole.

And that’s the thing of it. It’s not just big. It’s huge. Check the playbill. There are six designers, three directors and a choreographer. The cast numbers nineteen, and the ensemble another fifteen. Add another DeMille-ish hoard in the Running Crew and Support Staff.

At times the stage looks like chaos, a loosed volcano, bursting, crazily kinetic –thanks: Laura Branen, Choreographer. Impossible, endless energy. There’s probably a line of ambulances waiting out back for the pulled hammy or  unsettling aneurysm.

Yet bits, beats, scenes are well conceived, neatly seen, under control down to the tiniest detail. When Sandy enters the cafeteria with her conspicuously innocent apple on her tightly gripped tray, you get it. Reinforced by filigreed detail, the whole is nifty, tight as an ivory button. Uncountable costume changes work –Peter Pan collars, but Thank God!no poodle skirts. Even set change transitions (which have been known to do in “Grease”) are done without the slightest desperation or clunk.

Superbly talented, with voices that can belt or hit the swooning falsetto and flexibility that nimbly handles the very gymnastic choreography, it’s a big strong cast featuring fine performances in the wide-eyed Sandy (Lauren Martin) and the swaggering Danny (Trevor Hoffman). Patrick St. John steals some of the spotlight with his smooth, effortless dancing and nicely done “Teen Angel.”

Vocal combinations of duos, Pink Ladies, T-Birds color the rhythm with variety, and there are some sterling solos; Sophia Martin (Rizzo) is notably and sweetly raucous.

“Chang chang changigity chang shoo bop that’s the way it should be.    Waooooo yeah…”

This production is more than a handful, it’s an ambitious armload that succeeds on every level. Resounding credit, and  echoing applause must go to Director Laura Downing-Lee for what must have been intensely demanding work and the  ingenious direction to quilt it all together.

Check the theater for tickets; I understand there are sell-outs.

–Annie Hewitt

If you don’t fall asleep at night as planned, your parents take care of it. That’s what they do. That’s their job.

With a cup of hot coffee at hand, Mom sits at the kitchen table with you blanketed and nestled in her arms. She rocks you gently back and forth gliding you into slumber.

Or Mom curls you into her arms and tabs softly around the dining room table in her slippers until you nod off. You are soon sleeping like a baby. After all, what do you know? You ‘re a baby.

Or Dad puts you in the car chair and drives you around and around. The car’s  soft hum and sway induce a sleepy state. Or maybe someone in the Neighborhood Watch calls the police to tell them there’s a suspicious car continually circling the block. It’s not your problem; you’re a baby. You sleep.

When you get old, you can have trouble getting to sleep and staying there. And nobody wants to drive you around the block. Where’s The Sandman when you need him?  Funny, you nodded off just after lunch, but now you want to sleep and your head and body are driving the Indy 500.

You have to trick yourself to sleep.

(Let’s look away from the forty-seven different kinds of sleeping pills now available to the sleep starved public. That can’t be a good idea)

Ovaltine is an old school favorite.

Reading helps. The Smithsonian magazine is more successful at inducing slumber than, say, Stephen King. Save George Carlin or David Sedaris for daytime reading.

About six months ago I began trying different kinds of herbal teas. Soon I hit upon Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time Tea. I liked the Poppa bear in his nightcap.

Sleepy Time produced a pleasant languor, a definite sluggishness, but sleep, the REAL THING, still eluded me.

I can’t remember all the brands of tea I tried. (Memory and old age is another, broader, topic in this series, numbers 3 through 7.)

They had names like “Bedtime Tea,” “Nighty, Nite,” and the more hopeful “Dream On.”

Then I tried Sleepy Time EXTRA. You had to pay something extra for the EXTRA, but it was well worth it. I shot past doze and hit full snooze in no time. But like all products of this sort, it came with side effects. For me, the main side effect, aside from some unusually colorful and biblically complex dreams, was that it was difficult to wake up. Even easing back to half a cup did not quite do the job.

Not being a coffee drinker (see Number 19 in the series: Kidney Stones and How to Get Along with Them) I found the answer right back at Celestial Teas: “Morning Thunder.” Bam! Snapped me right out of Morpheus into the brightness of morning. “Morning Thunder” is a stout combination of black tea and mate’. But once again “Morning Thunder” did its job too well, a slap too snappy. So I searched until I found the less exuberant “Energizing Black Tea” made by Good Earth; its modest goals fit better, and, as a bonus, you got a little yellow tab on the end of each tea bag string containing a meaningful quotation.

By now my shelf was stacked with boxes and boxes of fragrant teas whose job it was to ease me into sleep or jolt me awake. I had become a tea junkie.

Soon the inevitable happened. One night long after taking my tea I was still restless, tossing and turning. Then it dawned on me, so to speak. I had inadvertently taken the wrong tea. Yep. There was the tell-tale tab from the morning tea with the quote; “Enthusiasm is the great hill-climber.” Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915. I had given myself a wake-up call at bedtime.

Back in bed I spent a night of fitful sleeping and waking. Later that morning, when I routinely steeped my regular Energizing Black Tea, I noticed the little yellow tab.

“Time as he grows old teaches all things.”

Aeschylus, 525 BC-456 BC.

First we need to set aside those nomination categories nobody really cares about. What’s a gaffer anyway? Who’s the Best Boy? You get the idea. Many categories are beyond lay comprehension—they present those at some other place, some other time. Forget them. And some are just confusing.

Choosing what to consider between Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography is confusing. What’s the difference? Especially in this day and age when anything can be CG enhanced. In Best Art Direction I recommend “Sherlock Holmes,” an entertaining movie that demonstrates that  between “Sherlock” and “Ironman,” Robert Downey Jr. has decades of scripts to come playing the same character in two time periods.

Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer (“Sherlock Holmes”) have been there before and should win again for their inventive gadgets and cleverly detailed sets.

Similarly confounding are Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. These awards tend to honor movies with an unreasonable number of explosions in them.  Honoring those is like bestowing a gift on the guy who selects and edits the scenes we see in previews before the main feature comes on. You know the ones I mean, the ones produced and edited by someone with an intensely severe bi-polar disorder that, additionally, threaten serious hearing loss.

Since 9 of the 10 movies nominated in these two categories are the same (they honor that guy) and constantly and unnecessarily parade forth paroxysms of violence, flame, turbulence, rage, explosion, vicious blasts, spasm and rush. But one of the nine is about “Transformers”; that’s a toy not a movie; so it is disqualified.  Only 1 (“The Hurt Locker”) of the remaining is actually about explosions; so it makes perfect sense that it should win. But there are mitigating circumstances. So the award for best Sound Editing goes to “Up,” a movie about simply  popping balloons.

Now back to the mitigating circumstances.

This year the nominations are dominated by a bully, “Avatar.” “Avartar” received nine nominations from the Academy. “Avatar” will earn more than $ 2.5 billion worldwide. “Avatar” is a 4/7 betting favorite to win the Best Picture Award. True, “Avatar” introduced new technology that will change movie making forever. Or until it obsolesces next year.

“Avatar” might earn Best Screenplay Stolen from Another Screenplay (“Ferngully”), but otherwise it should be ignored. It should be ignored for two reasons. (1) It breaks the rule of Too Much Gratuitous Stuff. Too much gore, explosion, fire, pretentious language, predictable endings, insurmountable hype, violence, clichés, phony romance, allegorical strain, and pandering to the 13-19 year old movie going market. And (2) if Kathryn Bigelow would have stayed married to James Cameron, “The Hurt Locker” would not have gotten made. A huge loss.

“The Hurt Locker” along with “An Education” deserve Best Picture. Get out the hacksaw.

Award Kathryn or Quentin Tarantino (“Inglourious Basterds”) Best Director; Jeff Bridges (“Crazy Heart” or Colin Firth (“A Single Man”) Best Actor, Carey Mulligan (“An Education”) Best Actress. Christopher Waltz, the best villain since Tim Roth’s Sir Archie (“Rob Roy”) wins Best Supporting Actor. Vera Farmiga And Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”) get Best Supporting Actress. Always keep the hacksaw handy.

“Up” wins, “Un Prophete,” France, wins, “Food,Inc” wins, Randy Newman wins, “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” wins, “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” wins. Nobody cares about Best Make-up because  we can’t tell when it is and when it isn’t; besides Best Costume still isn’t Best Costume without Edith Head.

Spread the other awards among those fine movies already mentioned.

James Cameron can feel richly rewarded by his earnings.

DAY ONE:
Never be more than 12 steps away from a BTC Cookie. That way you can always recover.

That was definitely a theatrical experience. Jeg blev spraengt I luften. De smager godt! Jeg spiste et par for mange. Mange tak skal du ha!
John Bergstrom, New York/Denmark

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of BTC Pecan Praline cookies. A child had written a note. Take all you want. God is watching the apples.