How to succeed in Saturday without really trying

A couple of weeks ago, my father asked my mother and me if we’d like to go see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying on Broadway. It’s the Tony Award-winning new revival starring Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette, and he had an offer for discounted tickets through work. So we went, and it was terrific fun, even if it is still about a thousand and ten degrees in the city.

We had dinner downtown afterward and then came home on an early-evening train. My sister and her husband are visiting for a friend’s thirtieth birthday party, so we came home to two barking dogs (ours, my sister’s), both of whom needed to go out.

Then I watched the latest episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day. I liked this episode in that the plot seems to be developing, but I’m not really sure I liked it a lot beyond that. I really do think the move to America and expansion to ten episodes for a single, contained story is working against the show. At times, it feels like it’s trying to replicate the urgency (and success) of Children of Earth — to the point where they even recycle one of COE‘s main plot devices — but doing so with the lack of finesse (and explicit but not very titillating sex) of the show’s first season. There’s enough, still, to like about it to keep watching — and heaven knows, I’ll almost certainly keep watching to the very end — but I’m not enjoying it as much as the Torchwood miniseries before it.

That was Saturday.

Fry day

It was hot today. Very, very hot. Some reports had temperatures in the city as high as 110°F, and it easily reached triple digits by mid-morning. Any thought that I might sneak into work early, ahead of the heat, was thrown out the window pretty early. Even at 8 am, Manhattan was a hazy, sweaty mess. By mid-afternoon, when I ventured as far as across the street for lunch, it was like walking into a wall of heat, like swimming in an oven. And the heat is supposed to keep up over the weekend, too, so that should be fun.

On the plus side, of course, there was air conditioning on my train and there again wasn’t any toilet water on the floor. So that’s good.

Random 10 7-22-11

Well, either nobody’s reading these anymore, or last week’s lyrics were just really, really tough. Maybe you’ll have better luck guessing this week:

  1. “The Sweetest Thing” by Camera Obscura
    My love, you’re in a magazine
  2. “Jet Airliner” by Steve Miller Band, guessed by Clayton
    Funky kicks goin’ down in the city
  3. “To Ramona” by Bob Dylan
    Though I cannot explain that in lines
  4. “Nebraska” by Chrissie Hynde and Adam Seymour (orig. Bruce Springsteen)
    I guess there’s just a meanness in this world
  5. “Lost My Driving Wheel” by Cowboy Junkies
    They took my money on the night train north
  6. “Sparkly Vampires” by the Rifftones
    I can tell by the way that you don’t kill me
  7. “Stay” by Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs, guessed by Clayton
    Now your daddy don’t mind
  8. “Pony” by Sara Watkins
    Now I am full of hollow on Maxwell Street
  9. “American Idiot” by Green Day, guessed by Kim
    And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
  10. Mystery Science Theater 3000 Theme Song,” guessed by Kim
    Just a regular Joe they didn’t like

Good luck!