They Also Had to Tell Him His Puppy Was Adopted

Just got back from a lovely dinner at FOS's house, cooked by WOFOS.  The food was delicious, a mixture of traditional Jewish and Danish delicacies that I have decided to call the Resistance Special.  (Trademark!)  I now feel no need to eat for the next couple of days.  Alas, the night was not without drama. 

Like your good friend the Solipsist, FOS is Jewish.  While not Orthodox, he is relatively observant--call him Conservative-Plus (I, in contrast, am Atheo-Semitic, at best).  After their marriage, WOFOS converted to Judaism, and she has taken her commitments to the faith seriously: Witness, for example, the homemade matzo ball soup at tonight's dinner.  She did not, however, convert right away--not out of any particular reluctance, but merely due to the fact that, you know, life was happening, and she didn't have as much time as she would need to meet all the requirements.  For in case you didn't know, we Jews are selective: We don't just accept any Tom, Dick, or Brittney.  There are classes to be attended, tests to be taken.  Unlike Jews such as Yours Truly--"Legacies," if you will, born into the faith, who can slide by with mediocre grades ("Mensch's C's."?)--dedicated would-be converts have to work it!  And work it WOFOS did, completing her conversion some six years ago.

Here's the thing, though, her son (OK, SOFOS) didn't know this: He knew his Mom was a convert, but he had assumed that she had completed the process before he was born.  It was only tonight, during dinner, that he discovered the awful truth: He was six years old before his mother was Jewish.

Now, if you know anything about Judaic law, you know that Judaism is a matrilineal faith: If your mother is Jewish, so are you; if your mother is not Jewish, well, then, you're just one of the Goys.  SOFOS was highly disturbed to discover that he had "not been" Jewish until he was six years old.  FOS immediately assured his son that he was, in fact, Jewish, as he (FOS) had taken the newborn SOFOS to the mikvah (a sort of ritual Jewish bath) shortly after his birth and had him officially converted (newborns don't need to take all the tests).  SOFOS seemed somewhat skeptical, but after much reassurance--and a promise to take him to the mikvah again if he insisted--the matter was, at last, put to rest.

I would just like to say to SOFOS: Young man, any woman who prepares matzo ball soup, brisket, and chicken pot pies for a Shabbos dinner is as Jewish as you'll ever need anyone to be.

Consider the Understudy

Theater enthusiasts and those who love (or tolerate) them know that, in the heart of Manhattan, on an island in Times Square, can be found the TKTS booth.  TKTS, a discount ticket service operated by the non-profit Theater Development Fund (TDF), works like this: Every day (twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays), Broadway theaters have unsold tickets.  Rather than let these seats go unused, these theaters (along with some Off-Broadway houses) release tickets to TDF, which then sells them at discounts ranging from 30-50% at the TKTS booth.  Would-be theatregoers then stand in a (usually very long) line for these tickets.  The catch, of course, is that one never knows which shows will be available on any given day (note to the uninitiated: Forget "Book of Mormon").  Nevertheless, if you are simply in the mood to see a Broadway show, you can usually find SOMETHING worth seeing.

So it was yesterday, as I traveled into Manhattan to check off another item on my New York to-do list.  I got to TKTS around 12:30, planning to see a Wednesday matinee.  The line for musicals was unappetizingly long (it usually is), so I decided to go to the considerably shorter "Plays Only" line.  As I neared the ticket window, I looked at the list of available shows and narrowed my options down to "The Nance" or "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike."  The former stars Broadway icon and occasional meerkat Nathan Lane as an aging Vaudevillean; the latter, which just won the Tony Award for Best Play, is sort of a Chekhov play by way of Christopher Durang--which would probably appeal to the kind of people who understand that description.

Unsure which way to go, I placed an emergency call to DOS who, despite living in the wastelands of Florida, still keeps track of the world of theater.  DOS recommended "Vanya and Sonia. . . et al." "if for no other reason than that Nathan Lane has been out sick for a week."  A not unreasonable judgment, of course, but it got me thinking: What about Lane's poor understudy?

Look, I understand that people go to the theater for an experience--or, rather, an Experience, something other than what they can get from the latest Hollywood blockbuster or from staying home and watching a "Game of Thrones" marathon.  This Experience, however, has become increasingly unaffordable for the average theatregoer.  Ticket prices for popular musicals verge on the astronomical, and even a discount--DISCOUNT--ticket for a straight play can run you upwards of eighty bucks.  So I sympathize with the impulse to pass on a play when the star is out sick, particularly when that star's presence is the show's primary draw.  (There might, for example, be Durang enthusiasts who will see one of his plays regardless of the cast, but how many people will flock to a play by. . . y'know, whoever wrote "The Nance"--that guy!. . .unless it has a major star?)  Indeed, it is standard practice for theaters to offer refunds for ticketholders of a performance when a star is replaced by an understudy.

I am here to tell you, though, that this is flawed reasoning.  To take the example of "The Nance," Nathan Lane's understudy is a man named Stephen de Rosa.  While he has nothing close to Lane's name recognition, DeRosa is an accomplished actor in his own right, having numerous credits on stage and television (he is perhaps best-known for playing Eddie Cantor in HBO's "Boardwalk Empire").  Furthermore, understudies do exactly what the title implies: They "study" under the direction of the star and the director.  When called upon to perform, a good understudy will essentially duplicate the star's performance; indeed, you might even see a better performance from the understudy: A star may become complacent in a role, but understudies know they may only have that one chance to make an impression.  And in this day and age, when every theatergoer is a potential reviewer--a free-lance writer, a Twitterer, a (ahem) blogger--understudies know that a good performance could actually earn them some significant acclaim.

So the next time you go see a show, don't fret about whether the principal star will appear or not.  Most likely, you will get to see your A-list performer.  But if you end up with an understudy, you're probably not missing much.  Remember, even Nathan Lane probably understudied someone early in his career.

Oh, yeah, I went to see "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike."  Julie White, who just replaced Sigourney Weaver, was fine.

Citizens of the World, Mourn!

Garry Davis has died.  No, not the lead singer for Deep Purple (I thought so, too).  No, in fact, Davis was an American World War II veteran who in 1948 "entered the American Embassy in Paris, renounced his American citizenship and, as astonished officials looked on, declared himself a citizen of the world."  Davis subsequently became recognized as "the dean of the One World movement, a quest to erase national boundaries that today has nearly a million adherents worldwide."  The idea was that the fundamental causes of war all boil down to territorial or nationalistic disputes between countries; hence, no nations = no wars.  Basically, this is also the premise of "Independence Day," only without the threat of intergalactic annihilation.

Davis established the "World Government of World Citizens" 60 years ago.  He also campaigned for the position of President of the World several times, and, since he ran unopposed, I assume he won.  For the most part, other countries ignored the "World Government," although a handful of countries do recognize passports issued to "World Citizens" as legitimate documents.  If you should happen to be in the market for a "World" passport, you can get one; you just pay a fee: $45 for a three-year passport or $400 for a 15-year passport.  That fundamental "logic" of that fee structure, by the way, clearly establishes the "World Government's" bureaucratic bona fides.

Pass the Frankenjuice

A lengthy article on the front page of today's Times discusses the efforts of scientists and the citrus industry to rescue Florida's orange crops from the effects of citrus greening--an incurable plant disease destroying large swaths of the state's crops.  The "hero" of the story is Ricke Kress, the president of Southern Gardens Citrus, a massive orange-growing concern that supplies product for the likes of Tropicana and other major juice companies.  Kress has enlisted plant geneticists in the battle against greening, and over the last several years, these scientists have attempted various interventions with greater or lesser degrees of success.  At the moment, the most promising experiment involves introducing a spinach gene into the orange crops, which in testing has significantly increased the orange trees' resistance to greening.

In addition to the considerable scientific barriers that Kress and others are confronting, though, there are major concerns about the "marketability" of the products that result from these efforts, should these efforts be successful.  Genetically modified organisms (GMO's) like these hybrid oranges are, in some circles, about as popular as Hitler: "If various polls were to be believed, a third to half of Americans would refuse to eat any transgenic crop."

Now, despite the fact that there have not, to my knowledge, been any definitive studies showing GMO's to be harmful to humans, I can understand people's reluctance to eat certain transgenic foods.  One potential solution to the citrus-greening problem involved inserting a gene retrieved from a virus, and even though--from a scientific perspective--there may be nothing wrong with this, there is undeniably a certain "ick" factor; similarly, I can imagine insurmountable psychological barriers to oranges fortified with pig DNA (another proposed intervention).  Ultimately, however--and call me a bad liberal, if you must--I just can't get myself too worked up about the prospect of eating GMO's.

Don't get me wrong: I have a problem with the practices of some big agribusinesses.  Monsanto, of course, is infamous for selling seeds that are genetically modified to be resistant to the effects of Roundup weed killer--another Monsanto product.  I object to this not out of some moral objection to "Frankenfoods."  I object to genetic modification done not in the interest of product improvement but simply in an attempt to increase corporate profits--profits that increase at the expense of farmers who find themselves effectively held hostage by Monsanto once they begin using these seeds.

But we're not talking about Monsanto here.  We're not talking about a corporate behemoth trying to manipulate the building blocks of nature in an attempt to plump up already overstuffed coffers.  We're talking about--basically--farmers trying to save a crop upon which thousands of jobs--and millions of breakfasts--depend.  More to the point, we're talking about scientists trying to find a way to cure a disease.  And why should genetic modification be off limits when it comes to curing a disease?

People who worry about GMO's seem sometimes to forget that "genetic modification" has been a standard part of agriculture since. . . . well, since agriculture.  Farmers have always tried to increase productivity or improve taste by cross-breeding crops to maximize the prevalence of desired characteristics.  One could argue that sexual reproduction itself is a form of genetic manipulation--the mixing and matching of genes to produce something new (and in my case at least, superb).  Again, I understand the concern about "man-made" (i.e., laboratory created) genetic material: We've all seen "Jurassic Park."  But ultimately what the orange growers are doing is nothing more radical than what has been done for thousands of years, albeit with a greater degree of technological sophistication.

As one scientist says in the article,  “People are either going to drink transgenic orange juice or they’re going to drink apple juice.” I, for one, do not want to see it come to that!