Kaohsiung, Taiwan

So where in the story was I? Oh, right. Two weeks in New Jersey. What a drag. Bitter cold winter temps, culminating in a huge blizzard in which me and my brother made the genius-worthy decision to drive down to Philadelphia to visit our other brother. Can you say “driving down the NJ Turnpike at 35 miles an hour”? I did all the driving, too, since whenever we went into New York, my brother did the driving (and parking, which I still have a neurosis about even though parking in NYC is much easier and saner than my experience in San Francisco ever was).

We only went into New York once this time to see the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” at Studio 54. It wasn’t great, but it’s always heart-warming seeing an all Asian/Asian American cast. “Pacific Overtures” originally ran in 1976. It boggles the mind trying to imagine what prompted Sondheim to put on a historical musical about the opening of Japan to the West using an all Asian/Asian American male cast. I’m sure he didn’t pitch the idea saying, “It’s a guaranteed hit!” But it had a healthy run back then. The current limited engagement features the delectable and talented B.D. Wong, but was otherwise lackluster. It didn’t deliver emotionally and it seemed the cast couldn’t handle the complexity of Sondheim triple-quadruple(-quintuple?) counterpoint. Unlike the original, this production included women in the cast which I found distracting, since the original mimicked traditional kabuki theater where all roles are played by men. The humor in the scene with geishas fell flat because they weren’t all men playing the parts. This production also missed by not completely changing the finale, which was supposed to be a commentary on Japan today, but Japan in 2005 is very different from Japan in 1976. They had the opportunity to comment on Japanese militarism and how it was sourced in the West, but then bring it back around to subtly comment on American militarism today. Now that would’ve been brilliant.

But now I’m in Taiwan, after an arduous flight which left Monday, and arrived today, Wednesday, completely losing Tuesday somewhere along the way. My uncle picked me up from the airport around noon and I’ve spent the last several hours battling jet lag and hanging out with my wonderful cousin and her wonderful daughters (aged 2 and 7 months). There’s such a big difference in the way these children are being raised and the way my brother’s kid is being raised. I’m not criticizing anyone, I just see the benefit of raising children within a family community, and I don't think my crazy parents (not to mention the possibly equally crazy parents on the mother's side) qualifies.