Archives for March 4, 2014

Satchmo at the Waldorf opens tonight at New York’s Westside Theatre. Nothing remains for me to do but sit back, watch, and hope.
This one’s for my mother and father and my beloved Nancy LaMott, whom I wish had lived to see it–and for Mrs. T, who makes all things possible.
In honor of the occasion, I’m posting, as I always do on my opening nights–of which this is, incredibly, the eighth–a well-remembered and much-loved TV theme song from my childhood. May it bring us all broken legs:

From 2004:

The UPS man brought me a couple of boxes’ worth of hardcover copies of The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, and I knew that the inevitable moment had come at last: my book has been remaindered. I can’t complain, really, since The Skeptic stayed in print for a year and a half, got terrific reviews, and is now available in a handsome-looking trade paperback. Still, you can’t help but feel a twinge of dismay when you open the form letter from your publisher advising you that your beloved baby will soon be piled high on the discount tables, there to be sold for humiliatingly low prices. No matter how good a run you had–and I had a better one than I ever dared to hope–the party always ends….

Read the whole thing here.

“A neurotic person with gooseflesh and teeth a-chatter, trying hard to be brave.”
Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams