Copper Is The New Quartz

Busy offline, today, so nothing new from my fevered brain until tomorrow.

Among the many items on my to-do list, a comedy routine for the boy's annual school talent show. We've become both celebrated and reviled there, which is a good thing, I tell my son. Unanimous applause is fitting only for Jonestown and State of the Union addresses. Far from widening the creative horizon at the boy's school, our bits over the past few years have inspired a slew of prohibitions, thanks to some of the more fragile parents who don't want their kids imitating our crude slapstick. As the boy's teacher told us the other day, "You guys made your mark here." My son positively beamed at that, as did I.

This is the last show before the lad moves on to middle school, and because of that, several other kids want in on our farewell performance. My democratic son invited two of his classmates to join us on stage, which forces me to choreograph something where everyone has something to do, and we hit our visual punchline under two-and-a-half minutes. Frankly, I have only the haziest notion of what we'll present, and only three days to rehearse before the show on Friday. So I must go and tap my inner-comedy Bob Fosse, or "Fridays"-era Jack Burns, or 1972 Del Close. Or maybe we'll just hit each other with stuffed socks and Cool Whip pies. The first-graders love that stuff.

Also, the generous Tom Watson has just added me to the New Critics roster, and my first post is now up. Some of you regs may recognize this bit from a few months ago at the Son. But I reworked parts of it, added some new lines, so it's sort of new, in a revising-the-expiration-date-on-rotting-meat kind of way. Enjoy, then purge.