WHERE'S EVERYONE GOING? THEY HAVEN'T PLAYED DREAM WEAVER YET!

The most infamous musical flop in the long and sordid history of Broadway is being revived. Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCollum, the guys who successfully brought us Rent, Avenue Q and West Side Story, are the producers behind this revival of Stephen King’s novel about a pretty high schooler with a mild case of social anxiety disorder and cool telekinetic powers that help her to act out every high school nerd’s wet dream about prom night. Despite the seasoned producer’s pedigree, one has to question whether they’ve been dipping into the pig’s blood when nobody is looking.

Here’s what a little publication called Time Magazine wrote in 1988, about the first effort to bring this novel to the stage…

Just a few days earlier, Choreographer Debbie Allen had been counseling the young performers of Carrie about how to handle sudden stardom. But as the disheartening word spread backstage, the ensemble members realized that they might have to learn instead to handle sudden unemployment. Last week, less than 72 hours after it opened as the Broadway season’s most opulent American musical, Carrie closed. Stephen King’s 1974 novel about a tormented teenager with psychic powers became a best seller, then a multiple Oscar nominee as a 1976 movie. But onstage it set records of a different sort: losing more than $7 million made it Broadway’s biggest failure ever. Said President Rocco Landesman of Jujamcyn Theaters, which invested $500,000 and provided a house for the show: “This is the biggest flop in the world history of the theater, going all the way back to Aristophanes.”

I don’t know about you, but I read that and cringed. I wonder what Seller and McCollum see that we don’t? Perhaps an intervention is in order by those who love them?

WHERE IS EVERYONE? ON LUNCH BREAK AT THE FOUR SEASONS.

“Carnegie Hall Stagehand Moving Props Makes $530,044″ That’s the surreal and disturbing headline of this Bloomberg News story. Half a million bucks for moving pianos around Carnegie Hall… Does anyone else see that as a sign that the end is near? I wonder what robber baron Andrew Carnegie would have to say about all this? He started out working 12 hour shifts in a cotton mill working at $1.25 per week. Hell, what would Dale Carnegie say?

• Dennis O’Connell, who oversees props at the New York concert hall made $530,044 in salary and benefits during the fiscal year that ended in June 2008.
• The four other members of the full-time stage crew — two carpenters and two electricians — had an average income of $430,543 during the same period, according to Carnegie Hall’s tax return.
• Artistic and Executive Director Clive Gillinson earned $946,581 in salary and benefits.
• Chief Financial Officer Richard Matlaga made $352,139.
• General Manager Anna Weber received $341,542.

I want the stagehand’s union, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, involved in my next salary negotiation! Remember when they walked off their Broadway jobs and closed 26 shows for three weeks in 2007? These guys don’t screw around and they certainly punk’d Carnagie Hall management, who signed off on the salary negotiations. And guess who comprises the Carnegie Hall board of directors? Drum roll please… Sanford Weill, former chairman of Citigroup, former World Bank president James Wolfensohn and Sallie Krawcheck, President of Bank of America’s wealth-management division. You can’t make this stuff up.

Bloomberg News story about wages at Carnegie Hall

IS ANYONE ELSE FURIOUS??

You don’t have to be an economist to know that people in New York City are struggling. And if you’re anything like me, when you hear about country club memberships, private planes, fat executive bonuses, limousines and corporate boondoggles at companies like AIG, Bank of America, GM, Chrysler, Citigroup, you immediately start fantasizing about finding these guys and stringing them up by their toes in the middle of Grand Central. You then calmly pass out eggs and rotten tomatoes to the ordinary citizens hurrying by, struggling to make ends meet in an economy that’s been devastated by the Peter Principle (from our friends at Wikipedia…The Peter Principle is the principle that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. This principle states that “in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties.”) In many cases, these guys gorging on the company “teat” are the same geniuses who drove their companies into the dirt to begin with. My second thought is always, “Is anyone else out there pissed about this crap?” AIG alone has been responsible for eroding the stomach linings of many hard working taxpayers who see what’s going on there as an affront to how a free market economy is supposed to work. You mean, you can screw up and then change the rules? Take for instance their retention program in their Financial Products group. It was a two-year program that began in January 2008, before its government rescue, designed to keep skilled employees from leaving and jeopardizing its derivatives portfolio . You know how many people in this country suffer through shitty jobs working for misguided companies without ever being offered a lump sum payment just so they don’t resign? These knuckleheads claimed they were forced to pay out $165 million in retention bonuses just to keep people from jumping ship (yeah, right!). They then promised to try to recover much of the money when word got out and all hell broke loose, but they’re falling miserably short. My question is: where the hell would these people have gone? Other employers wouldn’t be lining up to hire the geniuses who presided over one of the biggest corporate car wrecks in modern history. And there weren’t any jobs out there anyway! Especially in Financial Services. WTF? The world needs ditch diggers too. Well it looks like Obama’s administration may finally be responding to the public rage over the pay of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in federal bailouts. O has ordered his administration to see to it that the companies that received the most aid slash the compensation to their highest paid executives. I’ll believe it when I see it, but the plan calls for the seven companies that received the most assistance to cut the annual salaries of their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. The executive’s total compensation — including bonuses and retirement contributions — will drop, on average, by about 50 percent.

New York Times article on the Treasury Department announcement…

PLENTY TO DO IN THE BIG APPLE WHEN YOUR A*# IS BROKE.

When I first moved to New York after college, I was given the advice to enjoy my time in New York living paycheck to paycheck. A New Yorker friend from college advised: “It’s a great city to be super rich or dead broke. It’s the middle of the pack that gets screwed in Manhattan.” I eventually found those words to be true. It was the eighties and Charlie Sheen’s words in Oliver Stone’s heavy-handed morality play, Wall Street were dead on. Fifty grand does not get you to first base in the Big Apple.

Although Manhattan is currently one of the most expensive cities on the planet, the good news is that there is a whole plethora of things to do if you’re on a tight budget. In this wonderful video, The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler discovers that New York is really a city of small, manageable neighborhoods, and it’s not expensive if you know where to go. And as we all know, it’s one thing to have a wonderful day because you shelled out the big bucks to do so. But it’s an entirely new sensation when you enjoyed the hell out of yourself and it cost you close to nothing (… you somehow feel like you made money).

The New York Times Video: The Budget Conscious Weekend in New York

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE WELCOME TONIGHT'S DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER, CARROT TOP

You are robbing yourself of one of the quintessential New York experiences if you don’t check out the speaker program at the 92nd Street YMCA. It’s one of the most profound examples of the diversity of life in New York City. There’s something for everyone and the guest lecturers range from Morley Safer to Howie Mandel and Elie Wiesel and the topics run the gamut from “For The Love of Chocolate,” to” Charting Your Hormone Options” to “The Future of Islam.” Talk about a great first date. Or surprise your spouse and don’t tell him/her where you’re going. Image the “brownie points” you’ll accumulate when the cab pulls up to the 92nd Street Y… What a way to spend an evening!

The 92nd Street Y Schedule of speakers

"I SAID GET THAT COPY OF THE NY TIMES AWAY FROM ME!!!"

The new Broadway production of Hamlet, starring Jude Law opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in NYC on Tuesday night. The critics seem to agree that one of the positive aspects of the newest production of Hamlet is that it should prove to be a successful vehicle for exposing a wider audience to the works of William Shakespeare.

As far as Jude Law’s interpretive performance goes, they weren’t nearly as positive:

“If Hamlet talks about his mind, you can bet that Mr. Law will point to his forehead; when he mentions the heavens, his arm shoots straight up; and when the guy says his gorge rises, rest assured that he clutches at his stomach. If every actor were like Mr. Law, signed performances for the hard of hearing would be unnecessary… Mr. Law’s undeniable charisma and gender-crossing sex appeal may captivate Broadway theatergoers who wouldn’t normally attend productions of Shakespeare,” – Ben Brantley, New York Times

“If anything, Law starts out too overwrought, moaning and gnawing through the great soliloquies as if they were causing him intestinal distress,” David Cote, Time Out New York

“Law’s interpretation… is aimed at neophyte audiences lured to the play not only by the star but with the added promise of a thriller liberally sprinkled with yocks. This predicates frantic nonstop action as flashy, frequently jocular and unsubtle as possible, and the devil, or the more sophisticated theatergoer, take the hindmost,” – John Simon, Bloomberg News

Buy Hamlet Tickets at Tickets.Metrony.com

Remember Tim Blake Nelson from Syriana or Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Well, Tim’s a multi-tasker. He’s also an accomplished director , author and producer. He has an off broadway play opening tonight. Eye of God officially opens at The Kirk Theatre on Theatre Row following previews that began Oct. 2.

“In Kingfisher, Oklahoma, an innocent young woman meets a strong man of faith,” according to press notes. “A young boy witnesses a brutal murder. Where is the line between moral and radical? A love story between the lonely, the troubled, the forgotten and the radical believer who can save them.”

Information on Playbill.com

"HURRY UP AND FINISH THAT PASTRAMI! STARBUCKS WILL BE HERE ANY MINUTE..."

Rising property values, cultural shifts, health conscious New Yorkers, they’re all conspiring to kill the traditional Jewish Deli business in New York and surrounding cities. It’s sad to think that you soon won’t be able to sit down and order a nice lean pastrami on rye with mustard and a cream soda. Who knows, maybe they’ll make a comeback?

The New York Times article

"HEY, SWEETHEART. WANNA RENT MARLEY AND ME TONIGHT?"

We are! Craig Ferguson said it best the other night when he made the point that we are now holding talk show hosts to the same standards as elected officials-which is concerning. The thing we find the most disturbing is imagining this curmudgeon engaging in sex with women thirty years his junior. We’ll need intensive sex therapy to shake that image. Seeing Dave on his show every night acting the fool, all because he couldn’t keep it in his pants, is well…. kind of sad. Remember when Dave was the epitome of late-night edginess and cool? Seems like a hundred years ago…

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon is back on Broadway Oct. 2 with the first preview of his 1983 autobiographical play Brighton Beach Memoirs, at the Nederlander Theatre. The cast will feature Santino Fontana, Laurie Metcalf and newcomer Noah Robbins among its players. Brighton Beach officially opens on October 25th at the David T. Nederlander Theatre, located at 208 West 41st Street, NY.

Tickets are available at tickets.metrony.com