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May312005

You might as well live in the past

Filed under: Headline Shooter   Tagged: , , ,

At least once in a while. From time to time David Remnick breaks his vow not to let The New Yorker become a tomb o' Tilleys and allows something related to the magazine's history into, for example, the events listings:


THE TALK OF THE TOWN
The Peccadillo Theatre Company’s brisk and clever play about the wits who gathered at the Algonquin Round Table in the twenties, featuring well-crafted period-style songs by Ginny Redington and Tom Dawes, plays every Monday night this summer in the hotel’s Oak Room. (59 W. 44th St. 212-840-6800.)

I'd like to see this, although the Dorothy Parker Society's Kevin Fitzpatrick regrets that writers Ginny Redington and Tom Dawes commit heinous crimes of inaccuracy. Parker and Benchley hot to butter each other's crumpets—come again? As Fitzpatrick said at his Algonquin tour recently (I paraphrase, since I left my notebook at The New Haven Advocate), everyone knows Parker was into young studs and Benchley preferred chorus girls who were not, shall we say, horticulturalists. Still, if someone wants to give me a ticket, I'll review it. At emdashes, there's no shame about bribery, although I can't promise a positive report. Everyone who's ever read one of my reviews knows, however, that there's nearly always something cheerful to say (about, say, a book's cover design, or an actor's euphonious name), so that should be incentive enough.

As for Benchley, he may not be wowing hoofers with regularity anymore, at least as far as we know, but he's still zinging the strings of sportswriters' hearts—at least this one, a lovely argument for having readers (like Karen Crouse here) cover sports:

[The Spurs' Robert] Horry is five victories from a sixth NBA championship ring that would tie him with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the most bejeweled basketball players since the Celtics teams of the '50s, '60s and '70s.

The only other Robert we can think of who so unexpectedly found himself in such esteemed company was a writer named Benchley, who hung out at the Algonquin Round Table in New York with Dorothy Parker.

Like Benchley, Horry's credentials are impeccable. He wasn't just along for the rings in Houston and L.A. and it's more of the same thing in San Antonio. In 13 NBA seasons, Horry's teams always have advanced past the first round of the playoffs.

How to get things done, indeed! Horry's no stranger to good books (and good works), either.

Goings on About Town: The Theatre [New Yorker]
Algonquin Wits Return to the Algonquin as Downtown Hit Talk of the Town Moves to the Oak Room [Playbill]
Commentary: Horry gives great teams that special something [Palm Beach Post]

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