I’ll Have the Usual.

I like being a "regular." Maybe you know the feeling. You walk into a bar, restaurant, shop, dry cleaner, and the person behind the counter knows your name. And you know theirs (cue the theme from Cheers).

I used to visit the same coffee shop a few times every week, and after a time, I was a "regular." Someone started making my prefered macchiato when I walked in the door. I got to know the employees--I heard about their kids, where their band was playing in the coming weeks, what they were writing their thesis about. And they heard a little about my life, too.

It was a bit of an ego boost, I suppose, becoming "known" in that particular universe. But I think the pleasure went beyond that. It was a wistful bit of nostalgia, a dream fleetingly realized, a hint of the "old days."

The days before “consumer relations” became a science. Today, marketing folks seek to turn every meal into "an experience": carefully chosen decor, invitations to "Try Our New...!" plastered on the walls and tented on the tabletops, servers reciting a carefully constructed script with forced cheer lest they get a bad review from their boss or Yelp.

Even the corner bar is changing. A number of years ago, I was spending a lot of time in New York doing library research. I came upon a nice little bar--Orchard--on the Lower East Side where I often stayed. I became a temporary regular. The bartenders were chatty and inviting and introduced the other regulars to each other. I got to chat with a character actor who had a familiar face, a guy starting a messenger bag company, a woman on the staff of a fairly prominent politician. During that year of frequent visits, I looked forward to my nightcap where I knew there'd be friendly conversation.

But when I returned after a hiatus of a few years, the place had changed: the music was loud, the bartenders were more concerned with precision mixology than small talk, the decor was tres chic. Groups and couples huddled in dark corners that glowed with the ambient light from their cell-phone screens. Friendly conversations among strangers didn't seem to be part of the intended “experience.”

A lot of bars these days are all about the experience. With their wall to wall HDTVs and pounding music, they seem to assume that people don’t like to just talk to one another. The basic “corner bar” is not quite an endangered species yet, so let’s keep it that way. Give me a battered sofa or two, a pool table, maybe a few board games in the corner. Those places trust in the old recipe: a couple of beers, good friends or friendly strangers, maybe a few neon signs on the wall. As the old song goes, “Wouldn’t you like to get away?”  

Almond Joys

Frank Almond

There's been a lot of back and forth among classical music folks regarding the "formality" of concerts. Should conductors "introduce" symphonies from the podium, offer a little music lesson before he or she gives the downbeat? Or would that disrupt the rituals that one expects at a classical concert: lights go down, concertmaster enters, applause, oboe plays an "A," musicians tune, conductor enters, applause, bow, raised baton, music.

There's a similar--if not as persnickety--ritual in chamber music concerts. But for 19 years, violinist Frank Almond has tweaked it in very satisfying ways. When the lights go down at a Frankly Music concert, he enters—not with his Stradivarius, but with a microphone. He says hello, shares interesting anecdotes about the program, tells a few jokes, and walks off to get his violin and the rest of the musicians.

Almond is a stellar musician with a reputation and connections that allow him to bring other stellar musicians to town. The Frankly Music chamber performances are consistently fine. But Almond also has a winning, aw-shucks California charm that helps audiences connect with the music. At this season’s final concert at Wauwatosa’s Schwan Concert Hall, he introduced pieces by Antonin Dvorak and Lukas Foss with the wry timing of a seasoned stand-up comedian. Dvorak composed his Sonatina for Violin and Piano in the musical mecca of—wait for it—Iowa. And he recalled a rehearsal under Foss—who was once Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony—in which Foss decided to re-orchestrate a canonical symphony.

His comments made the music that followed more satisfying, the connections between the American Foss and the American-ish Dvorak easier to hear. Almond and pianist Victor Asuncion handled the technical challenges perfectly, and brought real feeling to the different styles throughout both pieces—from hoedown double-stops to calm, formal simplicity. Nicholas Mariscal (the MSO’s new second chair cellist) joined for Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio. They captured the extreme mood changes, including the eerie and ominous second movement, which has given the trio it’s nickname.

Almond and company will be back for Frankly Music’s 20th season in the fall.

Succession vs. Sopranos

My befuddlement continues.

Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox in Succession

After growing tired of its one-note satire (rich people are conspiratorial and silly) and conspicuous consumption (“let’s play softball—to the helicopters!”), I resolved to stay away from the final season of Succession. But the media buzz caught hold, and I dipped into it again.

And again, I was flummoxed. Is it really a Great Show? Perhaps the various boardroom shenanigans of The Roys are more interesting to folks who spend time in the mergers and acquisition trenches. Perhaps the sibling subterfuge clicks with fans of Survivor or other reality TV competitions. Perhaps snark is addictive and some people just can’t get enough of bon mots like “You little slime puppy” or “You Machiavellian f***.”

I was a huge fan of show runner Jesse Armstrong’s In the Loop, which satirized the U.S. government in the lead up to the Iraq War—in a nice, tidy 106 minutes. Is it the sheer scale of Succession that makes the wisecrack style go stale and the story grow tedious?

I have a theory: I don’t like the Roys and their minions. Sure, no one is fond of the super rich. That seems to be a sure-fire trope for storytelling these days (see White Lotus, The Menu, Triangle of Sadness). But one-note characterizations grow tiresome after a while. Excuse the screenwriting 101 cliche, but “We should care about these people.”

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano.

Like we cared about Tony Soprano, for example. He was a monster, of course. A cold-hearted killer, an amoral Lothario, a grown man who eats Honey-Combs for breakfast! But after rewatching the entire series recently, watching Succession makes me miss him.

I miss him because I knew him: his childhood traumas, his fatherhood frustrations, his neuroses. And I knew the other characters as well. Sil’s quiet loyalty, Christopher’s volatility, Paulie’s by-the-book morality. Of course, David Chase and his writers and actors took these characters beyond the one-note descriptions. That’s why I miss them.

I know very little about the Roy’s, other than they are really messed up and they all want daddy’s multinational corporation for themselves. It’s odd that a show that begins with a childhood photo of Logan’s four children would reveal so little of their backstory. Armstrong merely drops them into the corporate world and lets them start throwing elbows and insults. Calling Dr. Melfi! I’m not sure that sitting Logan Roy down in her psychiatrist’s office every so often would make Succession any more interesting. But it couldn’t hurt!

Cruise Season

Lauren Oyler. Photo by Pete Voelker

No, not Tom. I’m referring to cruises of the Caribbean sort. Or the Mediterranean. Or the Alaskan coast. Wherever you want to go, there’s likely a multi-story boat ready to cater to your every whim—and those of 5,000 of your closest friends. (If you think I exaggerate, you should know that there are currently 15 cruise ships that hold more than 5,000 passengers, almost all of them built in the last 5 years.)

Perhaps to honor the post-COVID return of the big boats, Harper’s Magazine has produced a sequel of sorts. In January, 1996, it published David Foster Wallace’s “Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise.” It had plenty of snark, detail and footnotes. It became the lead essay in a bestselling book. That cruise was A Supposedly Fun Thing I’d Never Do Again.

Offering another perspective, Harper’s upped the ante and sent a writer on a very particular (and echt 2020s) kind of cruise. Lauren Oyler’s “I Really Didn’t Want to Go: On the Goop Cruise” sets her asea among aficionados of Gwyneth Paltrow’s overpriced, new-agey wellness product line, collectively known as Goop. Oyler’s take is equally irreverent and snarky, some of which she directs at “Dave” himself.

My guy Dave already covered what a regular cruise is like, as well as what Celebrity Cruises are all about, so I consider myself liberated from having to do this, as well as from having to do boy stuff like include a bunch of technical details about the boat and how it works, lust after sexy crew members, and shoot skeet. The only masculine piece of info DFW omits is the definition of a knot, which he could never “get clear on.” I suspect this is one of the less famous lies he tells in this essay, a lie on behalf of his Midwestern relatability complex rather than on the construction of narrative and character, because it’s not that hard to understand what a knot is, even without Google.

But she saves her best stuff her own 10 days in the world of Goop. And you can read all about it.

Short Story Month (continued)

Literary Hub continues to post an exceptional piece of fiction every day in honor of Short Story Month. Recent suggestions include stories by Grace Paley, Donald Barthelme and Z.Z. Packer. But allow me a personal recommendation: George Saunders’ “Tenth of December,” from his 2013 collection of the same name. He is a stunningly original writer, adept at creating fantastic worlds that illuminate the everyday dystopias of our own times. But this story poses big questions facing real humans. It’s simple, generous and profoundly moving.

Have a good week.