Recovering, A Maze, House of Cards, and Walter White will not be killed

It's been over two weeks since an SUV made a left turn into me and my motorcycle. For a couple of days I was elated to have walked away from it, especially by the fact that I could indeed walk, since my legs took the worst of it- the left getting smashed between the vehicle's front end and my bike, the right taking on the weight of the bike as it met the pavement. A few days later a different mindset, much darker, settled in as I had to take some time off work and realized that although nothing broke, my middle-aged body was certainly beaten. Lethargy, depression, and a vague dissatisfaction with the shape of everything began to take root and I felt seemingly hopeless to reverse any of it as I lay on my couch with my legs elevated and iced, watching television and the bruises change color.

I went back to work last week not because I thought I was necessarily ready, but because I couldn't sit around anymore. It was the lesser evil. On Wednesday I awoke feeling halfway decent for the first time in over a week, only to realize I wasn't as far along as I'd hoped when I touched my leg while showering and felt a deep throb run through it. I made it outside a couple of times during this to see a few things, most of which I wrote about with the exception of Just Theatre's production of A Maze, a remarkably plotted play by Rob Handel which was given an excellent staging under the direction of Molly Aaronson-Gelb and an exceptionally strong cast led by Frannie Morrison as Jessica, a young women who is kidnapped and held captive for years by an obsessive, deranged, illustrator/graphic novelist named Beeson (split into equal parts of nerd/creep/iconoclast by the talented Clive Worsley).

That's just one of the plot's threads, though it is the one which ties the rest together, and I couldn't keep from thinking of the Ariel Castro story as the play unfolded, though certainly Handel's script is a far cry from that real-life horror story. However, the Castro story is an inescapable noise in the background. A concurrent plot revolves around two musicians, one of whom knew Beeson in rehab, who decide to make a concept album based on his constantly-expanding graphic novel. The couple are portrayed by Sarah Moser and Harold Pierce- they're kind of like a grungier version of the band She and Him, or the Eurythmics pre-break-up. Pierce is interesting to watch, full of nuance, but Moser, with her rock-star attractiveness and fully-realized portrayal, is the magnet for one's attention. Handel's characterization of the two walks right up to the line of pop-star histrionic caricature but never crosses it, which in no small measure may be the result of Moser and Pierce's skills.

Also in this labyrinth is Janis DeLucia as an unnamed Queen with a newborn who has been abandoned by her King. The King has enlisted a nasty a troll-like being to build an endless maze to protect her and their heir. Lasse Christiansen and Carl Holvivk Thomas played those parts, respectively, and Lauren Spencer plays a TV journalist ready to exploit anyone she can, including Jessica, her mother (DeLucia, again), Beeson, and the musicians. That Handel balances these three narratives into a cohesive, satisfying whole by the time it ends is something remarkable, especially since the first half of the play yields almost no clues as to how all of this will tie together. The run is over, but should you see another company take it on, A Maze is a play well-worth seeking out. I think a film adaptation could be quite interesting, especially in the hands of someone like David Fincher

Speaking of Fincher, adaptations, mazes, and monsters, the downtime from active life has given me the ability and ennui to watch the first season of Netflix's engrossing House of Cards. As South Carolina Congressman Frank Underwood, Kevin Spacey is a political Hannibal Lecter- watching him provokes that curious response of equal parts of attraction and repulsion that only the most well-written monsters can inspire in a viewer. By the end of the thirteen episodes Spacey has broken bad in a way that makes Walter White look unambitious by comparison. As Breaking Bad begins it denouement (let me go on the record here and now as saying I believe Walter White will not be killed), House of Cards looks ready to pick up the mantle as the best thing on TV- especially since it too has a cast of excellent actors on board that make every character seem real and unexpected. Robin Wright, 47 years old and exquisitely dressed in every scene as Underwood's wife/accomplice, is without a doubt the sexiest woman on television and her prime seems far ahead. Hopefully somewhere in the future of this show is a Lady Macbeth moment for her, though Frank Underwood needs no one to tell him where to screw his courage since he's already screwing everything that comes under his squinty gaze. House of Cards is brilliant.

In my own prosaic existence, I regret not being able to have seen Paul McCartney's set at Outside Lands last night, but there was just no way I could have stood out in the cold night air of Golden Gate Park on weakened legs and enjoyed the show. But I do cringe when I consider the opportunity to see live shows by The Who, The Stones, and a Beatle in the same year is one that will surely never come again. C'est la vie. I'm just hoping that I'm feeling well enough to go back to my Sunday morning yoga class tomorrow- the practice of which I attribute playing a major part in being able to walk away from the accident, and one I'm beginning to sorely miss.

As for whether or not I'm going to get another bike, I still haven't made that decision.

Orange is the New Black

Not quite Velma and Roxie, but just as fun to watch...

I tried to go back to work yesterday, but it turned out to be too much and I ended up at the doctor's office in the afternoon, where I was told to take some more time off. I have some internal bleeding in my leg and possibly a slight concussion. All things considered I still consider myself to be extremely lucky, even as I lie on the couch, an ice pack on my elevated leg, watching it change colors by the hour from red to yellow to purple and blue, wondering why I didn't buy more chicken at Popeye's before I came home. The downtime has given me to opportunity to binge-watch the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. Just like the chicken, I'm kind of bummed I don't have any more to consume- it's good stuff.

I don't write much about TV because I don't watch a lot of it. That's not because I'm some TV snob- anyone who still thinks TV is a wasteland is living in the distant past- there's a lot of great stuff to watch, it's just that I have a hard time working it into my schedule- I've had the same two Netflix DVDs sitting on my coffee table for months and one of them (Chloe) I've already watched- I'm keeping it around because I'm sure at some point I'm going to want to re-watch the sex scenes between Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried.

Now that's the perfect segue.

Of course it doesn't take much persuading to get me to check out any story involving women in prison- at least for an episode or two, even if Linda Blair or Shannon Tweed are nowhere to be found and the ads make it look more Sex in the Cell Block than Roger Corman. Sex, violence, & bad girls? That's my kind of entertainment.

The show's based on a memoir of the same name (which I haven't read and probably won't) about former debutante and Smith graduate Piper (Taylor Schilling) who's about to start a year-long stint in the joint for being a drug mule ten years earlier, when she was living a very different life as the girlfriend of an international heroin trafficker (Laura Prepon). Today she's a privileged WASP, co-owner of an artisanal soap company with her BFF, engaged to a somewhat nebbishy guy (Jason Biggs). Piper comes across as that annoying type who lives in the Marina and extols the virtues of San Francisco's "diversity."  An early flashback featuring Piper getting hot in a bathtub with another woman hints the story isn't going to be so obviously clichéd, and thankfully the show's excellent writers spend a minimal amount of time on on Piper and Larry's current life before she goes behind bars.

Once inside, the writers flirt with the stereotypes and hackneyed plot devices one expects from the setting, before twisting them into characters and situations which become much more interesting and often unexpected. It's a great balancing act of delivering the condiciones sine quibus non of the genre (nudity, lesbian sex, predatory and corrupt guards, racial stereotypes, sympathetic bad girls, violence, etc.) and playing off them in fresh and original ways. In a somewhat minor miracle, the show's first season never arrives at the preposterous moment.

That's not to say it's perfect- there are a couple of moments that made me feel like it's a non-musical version of Chicago, especially since Schilling is the good-girl blonde and Prepon the bad-girl brunette, complete with Kate Mulgrew as Red, a Mama Morton-type among the diversified cast of inmates. The show droops when it steps outside the prison walls, which fortunately isn't that often, and Prepon is gorgeous to a degree I find distracting, but Orange hits all the right notes when it matters most and if anything, it feels like the writers have a keen sense of when to hold back and when to let loose. No punches are held (has any other show prominently featured an explicit beaver shot as part of the plot?) yet it never crosses the line into gratuitousness for its own sake (for a show about women behind bars). Credit this to a strong group of writers, a singular vision of what the show is about, and an excellent cast, which becomes the real strength of the show as it wisely expands beyond Piper's own story to include those of the other inmates- all of whom develop over the course of the season to be of equal interest.

As I watched the final episode of the first season I wondered how it would end. Although the story line was beginning to spread out in multiple directions, there seemed one thread which needed to be addressed within the little time remaining, and I was beginning to feel like the show would finally disappoint me at this crucial moment. It didn't- in fact it delivered a season-closing note as good as those found on Breaking Bad- and that's about as high praise as I can give it. Strongly recommended.