Choose Wisely, Grasshopper
By David Budin
I went to see the movie The Promise at the Cedar Lee. It’s an incredibly beautifully filmed Chinese fairy tale about themes common to many Asian films – loyalty and betrayal, fate and destiny, and also the nature of true love – but at its heart is the theme of making choices that affect your life and other people’s lives forever. It made me think about how I wound up where I was. No, no; not in life – that would be way too deep for me – but how I wound up at that movie at that time. And as I was recounting journey to that place, it made me think (and, you see – this is why you should only go to movies at the regular theaters) about how and why anyone chooses which movies or concerts or plays or any arts events to attend.
It started – well, who knows when it really started? – but let’s say it started on Friday, May 19, when I got in my car and turned on WCPN’s Around Noon show, just as Dee Perry began an interview with Cleveland theater legend Dorothy Silver, actor Charles Kartali and New Jersey playwright Judy Klass about Klass’s play Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, which was going to get a staged reading at the Cleveland Play House as part of FusionFest ‘06. The play sounded interesting, but I had to turn off the radio and go into a meeting before I heard when it would be taking place.
Later that day, my wife sent me an e-mail saying that CTIX was offering $10 seats to that night’s performance of Verb Ballets, also part of FusionFest. At that price, you practically can’t afford not to go, so I went online and got tickets. While we were at the Verb Ballets performance, much of which was great, I noticed, in the FusionFest program book, that Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One would be playing on Sunday afternoon, at a time when we had nothing else planned, since I was one of maybe a half-dozen males in Cleveland who would not be watching Game 7 of the Cavs-Pistons playoff series. I mean, I was hoping they’d win and everything; I’m just not that interested in watching basketball on TV. I also noticed that the staged reading was directed by Fred Sternfeld, whose productions are always really good – at least the ones I’ve seen – so that made me decide to see the show.
Before the play, we tried to go to Tommy’s Restaurant on Coventry, at noon on Sunday. We went there because it was my birthday and I got to decide where to go and whenever I think of all the places there are to go and eat, I almost always decide to go to Tommy’s. I’ve been eating there since Tommy Fello first started serving those weird sandwiches in 1972. And, hey, it was good enough for Rachel Ray to include – as one of only three Cleveland restaurants (along with Trattoria Roman Gardens in Little Italy and Slyman’s on Superior) – on her national TV show $40 a Day about three years ago. Plus, I’m on the menu: a sandwich called the DB. But that’s not why I go there.
Anyway, 12 noon on Sunday at Tommy’s, when you have to be at the Play House by 1:30, doesn’t really work. We couldn’t even get in the door. So, pressed for time, we walked up the street to the Inn on Coventry, which was fine, and also very crowded. It made me think that I should go there more often. And I’m sure that will be in the back of my mind next week, when I’m back at Tommy’s.
We made it to the Play House on time. The staged reading of Stop Me was decent. The actors did a fine job and play has a lot of potential.
Now, our original plan was to go to dinner after the play, but my 18-year-old daughter wanted to go to the Hessler Street Fair with her friends, so we decided on lunch, instead. Then, not going to dinner left us with the opportunity to go to a movie, which is how we ended up at the Cedar-Lee seeing The Promise.
When we got home, I was hungry because, as you would know if you’ve been reading this, we did not go out to dinner. So I sat down to eat something, and when I eat alone, I always read at the same time, which they tell you not to do because, they say, it tends to make you eat more. They’re correct. Anyway, I grabbed the first thing I saw, which was the TV section from the Sunday paper. That’s how I found out that the Food Network was rerunning Rachel Ray’s Cleveland episode the following Tuesday night, so I would finally get to see it.
I had been there, at Tommy’s, when she and her crew were there taping that part of the show. It was on my birthday three years ago, and my mother and brother and I met there for breakfast, knowing Rachel Ray would be taping, and we sat there for three hours, ordering more and more food, trying to get into a shot. We didn’t, but as a consolation, Tommy gave us the food that he’d made for the food shots on the show, We split them up and took them home. They were kind of like TV stars. Except that they were food. And except that we ate them. When I watched the show last Tuesday, May 23, I got to see my food on TV. It was a little surreal.
In between the Sunday of the lunch, play and movie and the Tuesday of the TV show – on the day that most people called Monday – I found myself onstage at the Rock Hall, singing a Bob Dylan song at the opening of the Rock Hall’s major Dylan exhibit (which originated at Seattle’s Experience Music Project). That happened because when I was interviewing Kevin Richards for a magazine about his nonprofit music and education organization, Roots of American Music, he mentioned that he was putting together a group of roots-type musicians to play for the opening. I told him that I do a Dylan song that Dylan never recorded, and Kevin invited me to play it there. I didn’t actually get to see the exhibit that night because I wound up staying on stage and playing along with the band for the rest of the evening. But the exhibit will be running for a few months, so I’ll be back to see it.
So, all of those things I did came about, in one way or another, as a direct or indirect result of doing something else. I could easily have missed all those opportunities, but chances like those present themselves I try to take advantage of them. And it’s easy to do in Cleveland – because Cleveland’s big enough that there are lots of opportunities, and it’s small enough that you can find out about them with not much effort. And that’s why Cleveland’s really cool. (:divend:)