cityboy-is rich!

Well, not really, but just won 25 dollar scratch off game (finally, have played them incessantly--only one per day though)  which arrives at a good time. Strangely my impulse is to sit on the money---not spend it---so we will see if that is possible. But finally, the green scratch off card paid off!
  Yesterday a hectic day with a phone call to sub for a  latin teacher  at 6:30---a march to the bathroom to make sure that I could leave the house by 7---a very short trip on the two subways (2 and R) arriving at Union Square in about 11 minutes. Then getting the e-mail with which included a quiz, printing it and making 12 copies of three different pages. No problem doing that though; all ready to give the quiz at 8:15. The rest of the day consisted of supervising three eighth grade classes as they did their assignments on their i-pads, a lot easier then it looks. Eighth graders seem perpetually stuck between lower grade infantility and upper grade seriousness---the result is most of them are wild and wacky. Got out okay and made it over to 145th street for one session. After that it was back to the apartment to crash and sleep.
  On Tuesday evening, caught Wallace Shawn's new play with eight actors including Shawn and Matthew Broderick. It is a strange piece filled with contradictions---one or two beautifully written scenes about despair and loneliness but much of the play is locked in to a simplistic vision and full of  statements that don't really make sense. The setting, an older bar and laid back restaurant in Manhattan is realistic as are the characters who come back to it for a reunion. But the world they inhabit seems made up---it was easier to go with this in Shawn's the Designated Mourner, because it was primarily a monologue, which made the audience almost a partner in Shawn's vision. In this play, a playwright who never made it big, finally finds "success" as a show runner of a superficial television series, and returns to a reunion of his last failed play with some of its other participants. It is the first time in a long time he has been in this restaurant, I assume one reason is that he has been in California making the series. But then the owner of the restaurant announces that one of his other cast members was in the place the day before---so is the series being filmed in NY. And if it is, why has the writer stayed away from the place. This is only one of the many strange contradictions in this half realistic--half fantasy piece. Again, some good and perceptive writing exists in the piece, but it seems to be caught up in a vision that is dull and "locked in".
  Today, will go to a protest demanding that a policeman who shot a black male without provocation in the Bronx in 2012 (about the same time as the more publicized Trayvon Martin incident) be brought to justice. He is still on the force, earning a salary. A little leery about attending, but realize that I must do it. After that not sure where I will wind up, maybe a visit to Mayday bar in Bushwick, I have always had a nice time when I have hung out there. Will report on all this tomorrow or the next day.