Tag: New York City

Tartuffe of the Upper East Side

Tartuffe by Moliere

A Play in One Act

A luxurious penthouse.

DORINE              

Should we wake him, Laurent? It’s nearly noon.

LAURENT           

Leave him be and let snoring be his tune.
We can hope he falls into a coma.
On this planet, he’s a melanoma.

DORINE              

You take him too seriously, I’m afraid.
When all he does is get drunk and get laid.

LAURENT           

I don’t care that he drinks himself blotto
While pretending to pray in a grotto.
It’s when he claims that his frivolities
Are the result of innate qualities
That I want to drag him from this gilded cage
And make him live on our pay, minimum wage.

Continue reading “Tartuffe of the Upper East Side”

An Elegy to the New York City Club Scene of the late 1980s

“The `80s were the last identifiable period.  If you see a picture from that era, you know it instantly.  The art, the clothes, the hair; they were unique.  After that, everything started to look and feel the same.”

That’s what the author Jay McInerney said (or something close to it) when I saw him at a book reading here in La Jolla.  He seemed wistful.  And why he wouldn’t he be, having hurdled like a latter day F. Scott Fitzgerald into the New York literary scene with his 1984 bestseller, Bright Lights, Big City?  As he spoke, I too waxed nostalgic for the time, the scene, and recalled a woman who once leaned against the bar of the Surf Club on the Upper East Side.  It was 1988, and I thought it was her birthday.

The Surf Club’s preppy, Wall Street trader vibe wasn’t for me – I preferred the scruffier downtown scene – but there she was: button nose, sneakers, shoulder-length blonde hair and looking like she knew something the rest of us didn’t. Continue reading “An Elegy to the New York City Club Scene of the late 1980s”

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