theaterboy®

Tboy has decided to be nice today.

Which is why he's not going to name names.

But he is going to giggle, just the tiniest bit, about how cute it was to see two notable D.C.-based actor-types standing outside the National Theatre stage door last night, jittery as schoolkids, waiting nervously for Cherry Jones to come out so they could tell her how much they love her.

Tboy, as you may recall, has a little Cherry Jones crush, too, so let's make it clear he's not actually sneering here. He's just poking a little fun.

And in celebration of crushes in general, and Cherry Jones in particular, he offers this, the first segment of what would appear to be a nice, long, terribly written TV melodrama with Jones and Brooke Shields as a Florida couple whose child becomes the focus of a legal battle after Jones dies and Shields forgets how to act.

Bonus: Anne Meara plays Jones' mommy ...

Tboy was awakened on Saturday ...

... by the euphonious voice of Rick Foucheux, murmuring reflectively into Tboy's ear.

No, not like that. You're terrible, Muriel.

Like this. One minute it was Scott Simon, introducing a piece about Tennessee Williams' journals; the next it was Foucheux, reading the journals.  And in a reasonably good Southern accent, too.

We like this. It's one of the beautiful things about having NPR here in D.C.

While Tboy's on the subject: He's excessively pleased to be able to tell you that he'll be starting a new gig at NPR on April 2.  He'll be producing arts-focused packages -- much like this one -- for NPR.org.

Looky there: Tboy's got a day job again. (First time since 2001, pretty much.) And he couldn't be happier about it. Full-time freelancing is lovely on the flexibility front, but it turns out to suck when it comes to things like money.

Farewell to Zarf.

Because the former Zarf (our boy Jeffrey Carlson) has completed her transition, and is now Zoe.

And because Tboy's friend Shana, who writes the Popnography blog at Out.com, has the backstory on yesterday's All My Children episode, in which Zoe attended a support-group session populated by what Shana calls "100 percent certified Actual Transgender People."

Six of them, in fact, according to this backgrounder from GLAAD. Apparently a good chunk of the scene was unscripted/improvised/real stories from the guests' lives.

Cool ...

UPDATE: Video below.

TMZ has an item here.

And BestWeekEver's inevitable take on the day's episode is here.

Gaaaah.

Not one but two jars in Tboy's pantry.  Both with the fatal 2111.  And one of 'em is half-empty.

Just Tboy's luck: He eats the salmonella and gets none of the weight-loss benefits.

For pity's sake, people.

Unbelievable. This, from the homepage at washingtonpost.com Thursday night:

Wow.  You think you could've waited until the body cooled to call her a gold-digger? I mean, jeezus. 

It's bad enough, the coarseness. Worse, it doesn't actually describe the damn story it links to.

The essay, as it happens, is a characteristically sophisticated piece from Philip Kennicott -- a relatively charitable assessment of the uncomfortable phenomenon that was Anna Nicole Smith and an exploration, at least in part, of a vanished character -- the courtesan.

Courtesan? You recall, my children, at least those of you who remember Camille. She's "the woman who makes sexual alliances for money, who was less than a blushing bride but not so fallen as a prostitute," in the words of Kennicott, who offers up a similarly efficient reminder of where the courtesan once fit on a spectrum of sexuality of which most American's prefer to pretend ignorance.

Among other things, Kennicott points out, the courtesan

was once a vigorous cultural type ... Courtesans were the essential heroines of our greatest operas. They offered up their bodies, in various states of undress, to painters from Caravaggio to Toulouse-Lautrec .... It was a courtesan who set in motion many of our greatest novels, not least of them Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" ... But the idea of the courtesan has all but disappeared, and with it much of the nuance about our analysis of sex and marriage.

Amen, sister. The piece is a good read; go check it out.

And while you're there, consider leaving a comment about the graceless subhead out front. It's as crass as anybody ever accused Anna Nicole Smith of being.

Other NYT randomness ...

Tboy is here to tell you that this kinda thing ain't unique to New York, or to Stoppard, or even to new shows. 

A friend was telling Tboy the other day that Netflix served him up a "Local Favorites" list of what his Dupont Circle neighbors were queueing up right that minute.

At the top of the list: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

My people, my people. [Sigh...] Sometimes the stereotypes are right.

Speaking of the Albee: It's the example in the lede of this NYT story about onstage smoking and the growing number of local ordinances that ban it. (It's apparently illegal in Chicago, the story says, but authorities turn a blind eye.)

Tboy assumes we've no worries here in D.C. -- he's pretty sure Kathleen Turner lit up earlier this month --  but does anyone actually know how the new law reads?

O League? O Helen? What say you?  And are the rules different if you're producing in the back room at Playbill Cafe than if you're renting at the Source?

Speaking of genderwhack ...

... and we were, weren't we?

Tboy's nightstand reading right now is Self-Made Man, Norah Vincent's extraordinary memoir of her year-and-a-half living and working among the hairy ones .

Disguised as one of the hairy ones.

That's her on the cover there. Yep, both pictures.  She cut her hair, bulked up her shoulders, found a theater queen to teach her how to apply a convincing stubble.  She passed as a man in blue-collar bowling alleys, high-powered sales offices, and skanky strip clubs. She made friends with the boys, and dated women, and betrayed both every time she sat down to scribble her notes about what she'd learned among them.

It's an astounding book, full of startling observation couched in impressively lean prose. Dr. H gave it to Tboy for Christmas, along with a copy of the original Pajama Game and a new podcast microphone, among other things. And damn if right this minute, anyway, it's not Tboy's favorite gift.

More from Jeffrey Carlson

... in character for sure this time.

For those of you who haven't been following the story, Carlson (who's due back at the Shakespeare Theatre this summer to headline the Hamlet) is busy setting fire to daytime television -- a startling number of the search-engine referrals to Tboy in the last few weeks are bringing readers in to land on this post about Carlson's appearance on The View.

Why such buzz? Well, he's playing a Brit rockstar named Zarf. Who's going MTF transgender. And who's caught up in a serial-killer mystery.

Now, Tboy hasn't watched enough of All My Children to know whether this plotline is especially outrageous.  And he certainly hasn't seen enough of it in context/in continuity to offer a critical opinion on anybody's performance.

But he does know that the not-very-reverent people at Best Week Ever are having a fine old time with the whole business.  Here he directs your attention to a couple of their favorite moments ...

And one last clip Tboy dug up on YouTube all on his own. No tongue-in-cheekery here at all: This one's pretty striking, don't you think? Especially given what they say about how little rehearsal time soap actors get...