The Village Voice “Best of New York”

As a rule, I don’t read the Voice. I do glance through the compilation of random inside jokes they publish annually, aka the “Best of New York.” This year, one entry made me wince.

I had the misfortune of passing “Carl” daily at my last place of employ, and had to witness both his ranting and the pathetic losers who would nod in agreement. Some of his pearls of wisdom:

• “When a man has sex with a woman, it is rape.”
• “Women are only made to serve man. Man must enforce the law.”
• “Britney Spears works for Lucifer. We can see this in her navel.”

Ok, so that last one is funny. But really, can’t we celebrate the goofy mute magician that lugs around a dove and a rabbit on the train? Perhaps a kind word for Chuckles, the squeaking clown whose outfit always involves a matching pair of sunglasses? I guess nice guys always finish last…

Brooklyn Masonic Temple

Christopher Gray explains the innovative architecture of the Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Fort Greene:

Nearly cubic, and roughly 100 feet on a side, the temple is marble, rough-textured brick and glazed terra cotta. The horizontals of the base and upper section contain the verticality of the middle section, a screen of pilasters and engaged columns. Architectural critics gave the temple rave reviews — but it does not, at first glance, look that spectacular.

So what is so great about this building?

Hewlett and his partners rethought several accepted practices, like the glazed terra cotta columns. To reduce the number of joints, architects tend to make columns out of the largest pieces possible. But terra cotta shrinks during the firing process, and the larger the mold, the harder it is to produce pieces close to specification, and the more prominent the joining.

With the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, the architects went in the counterintuitive direction, firing not three or four large sections per column, but about 50 much smaller elements. The resulting joints are so numerous they become part of the design, rather than merely interruptions.

The architects also used color with sophistication. The nearly monochrome shade of the marble base gradually evolves to a festive splash of sienna, green, yellow, cream and blue at the cornice and frieze. The cream-colored column drums were fired with a slight amber tone in the fluting, emphasizing the natural shading in the recessed grooves, and adding a color accent.

The designers also reconsidered normal bricklaying practices. Instead of the usual course-on-course brickwork for the wall surfaces, they produced oversized brick units by stacking the bricks in pairs, with dark mortar between the paired units. The design gives a massiveness that a traditional one could not.

Although the glazed terra cotta was considered nearly self-cleaning, today the Brooklyn Masonic Temple has lost much of its punch. Although the Masons have kept the brick, terra cotta and even roof cresting intact, soil has collected all over the terra cotta, substantially dimming its original brilliance.

Some buildings do not benefit from cleaning, and this might be one of those. But in the temple’s present condition, the original design can only be imagined.

Bonus Point: A Walk Through Fort Greene.

“Broadway Pit Shrinks; Drummer Is Sent to Room”

In the cutthroat world of Broadway, profit margins and fanciful set designers increasingly are taking precedence over lowly harpists and percussionists. Hilarity ensues:

On the seventh floor of the St. James Theater, two musicians in the orchestra for “The Producers” give new meaning to the phrase “phoning it in.”

The theater’s pit is too small to fit a harpist and a percussionist, so every night (and at matinees) Anna Reinersman and Benjamin Herman cram themselves into a 10-by-20-foot room draped in crimson velvet curtains, with water pipes running above.

As an air conditioner hums, they watch a little man – the conductor – on a television monitor. Headphones pipe in the music from colleagues in the pit downstairs, and close-range microphones transmit Ms. Reinersman’s and Mr. Herman’s own playing to a sound board. Their parts are mixed with the other players’ and broadcast through loudspeakers to listeners in the audience, who cannot tell the difference.

“I could play there in my underwear, and they would have no idea what’s going on,” Mr. Herman, the percussionist, said.

A satellite facility such as the one at the St. James Theater is known as the “sky pit.” And hijinks abound:

Life in the sky pit is an extreme example of what goes on, nonmusically speaking, in the pit. Reading and doing crossword puzzles are major activities, naturally. Look at the oboists and bassoonists, and you may see them whittling obsessively on reeds. One musician in “Cats” was known to watch a mini-television, using headphones.

“It sort of depends on what you can get away with,” said Matthew Dine, an oboist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the American Ballet Theater and now “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which he plays onstage but hidden from the audience by a scrim. “I get a lot of work done there,” he said, referring to the paperwork he fills out as a contractor for other ensembles.

The segregation of out-of-pit musicians also creates the conditions for shenanigans.

“It doesn’t get much crazier than dart guns,” Mr. Dine said. “We’ve had some small plastic flying chickens in ‘Fiddler,’ only because in our little area it’s possible.”

The string room at “Will Rogers Follies,” which ran from 1991 to 1993, lives on in legend. The musicians set up a basket and shot a Nerf ball, and laid down a putting green. Richard Sher, a cellist in the show, recalls lox and bagel spreads on Sundays, spiced with Bloody Marys. By the end of the show’s run, he said, players were improvising away.

Movie Stars Crying

Add Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Sorrow, Acsension, Suspension” gallery exhibit to your to-do list and see pictures of Ed Harris, Jude Law and Benicio del Toro crying. How fortunate are we.

Fortunate we are!

Are we fortunate?