BBM & PMG

Aug. 16th, 2020 02:50 pm
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Having finished the two-volume memoirs of Neil Simon several days ago, I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Brighton Beach Memoirs. I'd ordered the play, via Amazon--to be fulfilled by others, and somehow ended up with another book from the BB trilogy which I already had.

What I actually got was a sort of cool-looking, older paperback of Biloxi Blues but, since I was focused on reading the trilogy IN ORDER, lol, I complained about the error and received a prompt refund. Which was nice, expected really, but left me empty-handed with respect to my next read.

So I went ahead and re-ordered Brighton Beach Memoirs but harbored little hope that I'd see the book anytime soon--given pandemic-related problems in the supply chain as well as Donald Trump's dangerous and self-interested tampering with the USPS.

Imagine my surprise when, yesterday, I found in my mailbox not only my paperback copy of the play but, in a separate mailer, the movie adaptations of Brighton Beach and Broadway Bound! Yay!

The coolest thing, though, was when I flipped open Brighton Beach and found, at the front of it, a reproduction of the Broadway playbill. And, listed among the original cast members, a former classmate of mine at SUNY Fredonia, Peter Michael Goetz!

I'm not sure whether I was a freshman or sophomore but, as a requirement for one of my classes--either Speech or Oral Interp, I'd had to attend one of the plays staged down at Old Main Auditorium by the Speech and Drama department that year.

The play that I chose, to fulfill this requirement, was Moliere's Imaginary Invalid. And starring in it were Peter Michael Goetz and his then-girlfriend Connie Fleurat.

I remembered Connie from my first week on campus, during Freshman Orientation, when we were all required to wear those ridiculous green beanies with our first names scribbled, more or less legibly, on their white brims.

She struck me then as a diminutive yet forceful young woman and, though I never got to know her socially, I noticed that her warm smile and cordial manner went wherever she did on campus.

Later on, I read that she and Peter had married, following graduation in June of '66, and that he'd gone on to an impressive career in supporting roles on stage, screen, and television. Including as Eugene's father Jake in Brighton Beach Memoirs.

However, given what we know about "Show Biz," and considering what some of us have learned about life since college, I'm inclined to think that his biggest accomplishment is that he and Connie are still together...

LPK
Dreamwidth
8.16.2020 
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In the fall of 1962, I was a freshman music major at the State University of New York, College at Fredonia. These days--well, 56 years later--alumni refer to the school simply as "Fred" and that seems to suffice.

But back then I can't even guess how many loan, grad school, and job applications I filled out that required the name to be written out in full. Unless it was destined for an institution headquartered in New York State, I couldn't even use the now-common SUNY abbreviation for State University of New York.

Anyway, one of my classmates, that fall, was a diminuative young woman with an amazing smile by the name of Connie Fleurat. Fredonia was a relatively small school back then, with about the same enrollment as the small-town high school I'd just graduated from, around twelve-hundred total.

And, with freshmen required to be on campus a week ahead of everyone else for orientation, you got to know a lot of the people in your class. By sight, anyway, due to first names being scrawled in black marker on the white brims of the mandatory green beanies.

For me, unlike many of my classmates, there was no "girl I'd left behind." In my hometown or anywhere else, for that matter. There was just me, my Olds Studio trumpet, and, well, those long walks into town--for occasional classes at Old Main or a Friday night movie at the so-called "bat thee-ATE-er"--with those nondescript gaggles of green-beanied freshmen.

Connie, though, was one of those who'd always stood out, even in the universally-loathed green beanie. Meaning that, even though she was in my class, I was never remotely in hers, lol. And it wasn't long before she was frequently seen in the company of a handsome fellow freshman, Peter Michael Goetz.

Later that year, or maybe the next, I happened to attend a production of Moliere's "Imaginary Invalid," put on by the drama department in the auditorium at Old Main. To my surprise and delight, it featured Connie and PMG in the lead roles!

Flash forward fifty-some years to the present, and I'm reading online about the passing of legendary playwright Neil Simon. And, still being marginally possessed of an inquiring mind, I decide to look up "Brighton Beach Memoirs" in that universal resource of scrupulous scholars, Wikipedia.

Where I learned that this was among Simon's later Broadway successes, running from 1983 to 1986 for a total of 1,299 performances. With none other than our old classmate, Peter Michael Goetz, in the role of Eugene Jerome's father.

Now shamelessly surfing, I look up PMG and learn that he and Connie had married in 1966, the year we graduated, and had a couple of kids. No mention of a divorce or any of the other unpleasantness that seems so common to that walk of life.

Next, I felt compelled to look up Connie, herself, and the first article I came across was an obituary for her brother who'd been lost as a result of one of those recent fires in California.

Which, I guess, kind of stopped me for a minute. (Long enough, at the very least, to say that, Connie, I'm truly sorry.) Because when I encounter someone even remotely connected to my own past, I'm always hoping to find that something good has happened in their lives.

For whatever reason, it's comforting to learn that someone, who sort of came from the same place, has nevertheless managed to have a notably happy or successful life.

It could be anything, really, which might be seen as something more than what I've done, or something better than what I've had, in mine.

I'm not quite sure why I find that comforting. If I ever went back to the shrink that I used to see, he'd probably have a field day with that one.

But, having said that, it occurs to me that I've recently seen HIS obituary as well.

I guess what hadn't occured to me, when I was younger, was that getting old meant running out of such reference points for my own life.

Or that maybe I should've spent more of it laying down markers of my own...

LPK
Dreamwidth
8.26.2018  
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The snow from the big storm that's moving up the East Coast has been falling steadily all day. I've shovelled three times and used that as an excuse for skipping my workout. I guess, technically speaking, its direction and source might indicate that it's not truly lake effect, but I've also heard that part of the one-two punch we're getting IS from an Arctic air mass sweeping down across the Great Lakes. Regardless of the terminology, it's cold, it's white, and there's a lot of it.

One good thing that came of it, I suppose, is that it forced cancellation of the grandson's soccer practice. Which is not, in itself, a good thing. But it did free up some time, this evening, for me to work with one of my granddaughters on some music theory that she had questions about. She's in the 5th grade, is a beginning keyboard percussionist with her school's concert band, and had requested some help before her next class.

It's been just over 50 years since I walked out of Mason Hall as an ex-music major, having returned my loaner French horn and, a while later, selling my trumpet. But in a funny turn of events, I've now gotten to use some of what I'd learned back then and to try my hand at the profession I'd walked away from. And to have some fun doing it.

I'd been thinking, recently, about buying or leasing a mellophone which is a sort of bell-forward cousin of the French horn. It has somewhat the same voice and range as the French horn but, with its front-facing bell, projects its sound much more effectively when used as a marching instrument. In the last 25-30 years, for example, it's become the mid-range voice of Drum Corps International's marching brass, both in the U.S. and internationally. (It's also known as a "marching mellophone.")

Anyway, at the very least, I'm gonna have to pick up a beginning music theory book because vaguely remembering something that I'd studied over fifty years ago is hardly sufficient when mentoring a young musician. Coincidentally, my music theory teacher at Fredonia was a young percussionist by the name of Danlee Mitchell who had just finished a stint with the Seattle Symphony before coming east to teach for a year.

He also performed with my hometown orchestra, the Erie Philharmonic, and would go on to become an eminent music educator in his own right, having retired over a decade ago following a long career as a teacher at San Diego State and as a protege, performer, and curator of the life works of composer and experimentalist, Harry Partch.

That having been said, Professor Mitchell, let me hasten to assure you that I was both awake and attentive during those Saturday morning classes that I was privileged to have with you; I learned much and respected you greatly. But Dude, fifty years is a long time.

And those years, it would seem, have fallen across the mind like a wind-blown curtain of lake effect snow...

LPK
Dreamwidth
1.4.2018

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