Friday felicitations.
If Samuel Beckett, playwright savant of all things existential, had it right the last 14 months should have been Comedy Central. As Nell, his Endgame character, puts it, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” She goes on: “Yes, it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh anymore.”
But the hell with that noise. With signs of light now perforating the darkness, I vote for some gobsmacked admiration, whimsical chuckles, and delicious ironies. And in that particular order:
Item the first: if you haven’t dialed into “The Greens” at Lincoln Center, hie thee there post haste, either on foot or online (the photo at the top is from there). What you’ll find is a classic example of what the storied advertising creative Ernie Schenck calls, “thinking inside the box.” In fact, it’s a way to invite people back to the Center that bends limitations, defies physical realities, and generally makes me cravenly jealous of the idea.
Item the second: just when you think you know your home planet, the fussy scientists at National Geographic decide to celebrate World Oceans Day by adding a fifth body of slosh to the previous four. “But wait a second,” you might be thinking, “how about the Five Oceans song that dates from 2017? And didn’t we use to talk about seven seas? Ah, the sheer whimsy of it all, and damn, The Reductionist wishes he was sailing one of those bodies of water, little umbrella drink in hand, right now.
Item the last: this one relates to the problems Uber and Lyft are having with finding drivers in the “surge pricing” and becoming not-as-advertised unaffordable. Not funny for those of us who’ve grown accustomed to the apps, but the irony is unmistakable—all those cities who so blithely threw traditional cabs under the bus, are now having their resident’s bacon (and transportation) saved by them.
Thus, the tri-fold morals of today’s parable: think inside the plaza, one scientist’s ocean is another’s sea, and be careful of what you disrupt for.
Happy Friday. Go forth and be epic.
P.S. To view the article on “The Greens” https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/lincoln-centers-new-public-lawn-green-enchants-new-yorkers