The cast has control of the script

Best New Crack of the Day: The Decemberists' "The Engine Driver." Listen for yourself.

And I am a writer, writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones . . .

My other latest obsession is the demo cast recording of Charles Davidson's The Magician of Lublin—based on the Isaac Bashevis Singer novel—whose opening number is a bit like "Comedy Tonight" transplanted to nineteenth-century Warsaw, in a good way. Probably I can't advise anyone to run out and buy the album, because the musical hasn't even been staged yet (and I've got a copy made off someone's computer . . .), but if anyone here happens to attend the Cantors Assembly Convention in May, I think it should be well worth the ticket price. Between these two musical influences, I can expect to write some seriously geeked-out Yiddishkeit in the next few days.

Also, I now have a photograph from the Vestal Review reading. I look downright non-photogenic; but I'm unhappy with most pictures taken of me, so there you go. Everybody else looks pretty good, though.
(Cut in the interests of not blowing out anybody's bandwidth.)
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We're all mad here

I have just had a Moment of Weird.

About ten minutes ago, in bed and mostly asleep, I heard this Doppler noise that I initially mistook for a siren.

And then it got closer and I realized it was some guy, in a car, singing "Maria" from West Side Story.

Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria . . .

And then it Dopplered off into the distance again.

I shall now attempt to return to sleep, although I'm deeply afraid that I'll dream of Bernstein in redshift. This Moment of Weird brought to you by: New Haven.