I saw a program on Ed Gein last night, and they said aside from the killing and various other creepy things, Ed kept a box of severed noses in a box under his bed. (I immediately wondered if they smelled bad. HA! Get it? Because they’re noses! But I digress.) The part that intrigued me was that, after deliberation, a jury found him legally insane. Well, I would hope so. He pretty much sounds like the definition of insane. The Green River Killer, he just sounds grumpy next to Ed Gein. What did the jury deliberate about? Is there a number of noses that need to be in the box to qualify for legal insanity? Because I wouldn’t have to think about that choice for more than two, maybe three seconds.
My parents are on a theater kick right now, and I am more than happy to join them periodically. In the last two weeks, I saw Accent on Youth with David Hyde Pierce (not so great, bummer, still love DHP) and Impressionism with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen (good play, amazing set design/lighting/music, go see it), and Wicked (seen it before, LOVED it, saw it again, loved it again) and at the end of the month I’m seeing Waiting for Godot with Nathan Lane, John Goodman and Bill Irwin. I had to write a paper on Waiting for Godot in college and I came to the important realization that I don’t like existential theater. Not even a little. Not even if it is known as “the most important English-speaking play of the twentieth-century.” But I’m always hoping that I’ll grow as a person and I’ll get the point of the show this time. Ironically, I recently saw a version from Sesame Street’s Monsterpiece Theater that pretty much summed my feelings about Waiting for Godot.