"The I Hate This Show"

So for a few months now Dave at WCPN and I have been going back and forth about having I HATE THIS (the radio drama, of course) aired on WBEZ In Chicago, home to such noteworthy NPR programs like This American Life and Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me ... WCPN had submitted it to the Third Coast International Audio Festival at WBEZ, for which it did not win, but it attracted the attention of the folks at Re: sound a program which, if I am to understand it correctly, rebroadcasts programs from other NPR stations.

We were negotiating the fine points of the contract, and looking forward to finding out the broadcast date - which I was going to post here and send via email to my friends in Chicago so they could hear it.

It aired last Saturday. So, as Dave put it, oops.

You can listen to the online version of the Re: sound broadcast here.

I wonder if Ira despised it.

Howard Katz

Thursday, June 14, 2001

You won't believe this one - we saw the world premiere of a new play at the National Theatre by this hot, British playwright. It's about this complete, showbiz ***hole who has this mid-life crisis and loses everything he owns or cares about in a desperate attempt to find some kind of meaning in life. It was part King Lear, part story of Job, and the climax, the very end of the play, this broken, destitute, shell of a man, he finally grasps his reason for living as he recounts, in glorious, passionate detail (I sh*t you not) every beautiful, exciting moment of the day that his first son was born.

We had a fun train ride home that night, let me tell you. Thank you, Patrick Marber.

Well, it only took six years, but the Roundabout Theatre Company is finally bringing Howard Katz to Off-B'way. Starring Alfred Molina, this is the American premiere of the show that ruined an otherwise nice day for Toni and I.

Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

We checked out Children of Men the other night. I recommend it to anyone, though it is terribly violent and will bring about feelings of grief and helplessness in those already bereaved, or perhaps people in general. Hard to say. A film whose premise is the inability of the entire human race to conceive any more children would be disturbing to someone who'd never thought of it before, let alone those who think about it every day.

Having said that, it's excellent.

Even though I was not sobbing uncontrollably at the end, not the way my date was, images from the film have been haunting me for two days, and I just had to break my silence to mention it. One particular comment I wanted to share; the story of a child dying in his youth is being told, lovingly told by none other than Michael Caine (I thought he was channeling John Lennon - I just read that was actually his goal) and this other character, a (former) midwife says, "Everything happens for a reason."

I found it touching that that turn of phrase was included - I find it hard to believe that it was included by accident - and found it poignant that it was the midwife who said it.

Because we despise that sentence, don't we?