You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m something of a connoisseur of failure. This leads me in many directions, including savoring Broadway flops. (And that, in turn, reminds me that I need to replace my copy of Not Since Carrie
. But I digress.) So, of course, I have to note the NYT‘s navel gazing story yesterday on what went wrong with Brighton Beach Memoirs. (The linked comments seem to me to be more perceptive than the article; in brief, people are saying they don’t want to pay $100+ a ticket plus expenses to see something their kid’s high school produced last year.)
I also wanted to note the LAT obit for controversial rocket scientist Qian Xuesen. Xuesen is a prominent figure in George Pendle’s fascinating biography of fellow rocket scientist and genuine freaking weirdo Jack Parsons, Strange Angel
, a book which I strongly recommend. (When I say “genuine freaking weirdo”, I mean it. Parsons did seminal early work on rocketry; he was also a leading follower of Aleister Crowley and an active practitioner of thelmic magic. He also lost one of his lovers to none other than L. Ron Hubbard, and died under rather bizarre circumstances.)
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 7:43 am and is filed under Books, Explosives, Geek, Loser, Obits, Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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