Thanks in large part to global warming, at least one-third of the coral in the Caribbean, much of it many centuries old and virtually irreplaceable, has died in the last year.

“It’s an unprecedented die-off,” said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. “The mortality that we’re seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef … We’re talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months.

Thanks to reader Abby for the wildly depressing tip. 

Thanks in large part to global warming, at least one-third of the coral in the Caribbean, much of it many centuries old and virtually irreplaceable, has died in the last year.

“It’s an unprecedented die-off,” said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. “The mortality that we’re seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef … We’re talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months.

Thanks to reader Abby for the wildly depressing tip. 

Nearing $10 trillion before Bush leaves office.  The NYC National Debt Clock, which had to be turned off during the Clinton years because it couldn’t run backward, will not be able to handle the number.

(Assuming we don’t elect a Democratic Congress which might toss him out the back door within a year.)

Gratituitous further plug for Tom Tomorrow’s live appearances on the west coast this week: Book Soup in West Hollywood on Tuesday, Booksmith in SF on Wednesday, Stacey’s in SF and Cody’s in Berkeley on Thursday, and the Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle on Friday.

He’s an old friend and it’s fun to do Sparky’s voice (as I did at a Barnes & Noble here in NYC tonight), but I’d never seen him appearing live.  Worth seeing.  The cartoons are cool, hearing some of the backstory of how they came into being is cooler, and his honesty and sense of humor in the Q&A is coolest of all.  Also, the book is gorgeous.

Also, a hey to readers of this blog who said hi tonight when you realized it was me.  That was cool.  Really enjoyed it.

I can’t be at the rest of Dan’s run — I’ve got my own book to keep mothering into existence, and that’s getting more exciting by the day, honestly — but you can.  So if you’re around, go.

I rarely (as in never) review TV or movies or plays here, because
there are plenty of people who know more about those, are better at
writing about those, and whose entire living is based on combining the
two. So I stay out of it.

That all said, I’m still in New York, and have been treated to the current production of Sweeney Todd, now playing at the Eugene O’Neill Theater.  It’s fantastic. 
Not just for the Sondheim and the great acting and the incredible
voices, and not just for the magnificent staging in which the cast
doubles as both orchestra and stage crew throughout, dazzling the
audience with multiple displays of dexterity and bravado all at once.  

It’s also fantastic for the sheer volume of saliva.

Mind you, it’s normal for actors to spew a little while they’re talking and singing.  In fact, if there’s not some spit flying about, they’re probably not doing their jobs right, pushing every word and note to the back row.

Unfortunately, I was not in the back row.  I was in the front row. 

And this production, I must say, projects more than just text and music into the audience.  This Sweeney Todd lets the audience truly feel the performers’ emotions.  Specifically in the form of tens of thousands of tiny droplets.  And the occasional splurt.

Patti
LuPone has an amazing voice.  I am in awe, honestly.  So does every
supporting player in the cast.  But Michael Cerveris, in the title
role, gives us even more.  He gives us the warmth of a wounded soul,
hidden beneath the fury of a brutal killer.  He gives us a spectacular
dynamic and emotional range.  And he gives us towering eight-foot
plumes of saliva, seemingly endless fountains of sputum leaping high
into the spotlights before cascading two and three rows into the
audience, a vertitable one-man Vegas Bellaggio water show guaranteed to
raise not just your heart but your hands in response.

It was like
watching Gallagher doing Sondheim, if the watermelon was in his throat
and got smashed every time he said the letter “B.”  (Given that he’s a barber in a bakery who butchers a beadle… oh, god.)

You will laugh.  You will cry.  You will be wiping your eyes.  But not from the crying.

You’d
think, watching a show about the slashing of throats, that the literal
buckets of blood would be the main reason to go “eeeeeeww.” 
Surprisingly, no.

Don’t get me wrong.  The show is amazing.  But by the end
of the first act, people around me were silently squirming and
recoiling, as if to minimize their surface areas, every time Cerveris
came near the edge of the stage.  After two hours, once I was finally
resigned to becoming one with the finest saliva-borne pathogens
Broadway can offer, my amazement actually began shifting away from
Cerveris’ brilliance, and onto a single odd thought: How is this man not getting dehydrated?

In the sold-out performance I saw, the entire audience stood as one at the end,
thanking the cast with a hearty standing ovation that lasted for
several full minutes.  The show is so good, in fact, that I was surprised that all 1075 of us or so weren’t spitting back on the stage in unison, just to show our appreciation.

So.  Go see Sweeney Todd if you can.  This Michael Cerveris guy is phenomenal.  I recommend seeing anything he is in, ever, for life.

But sit in the back.  Bring a towel, just in case.  And goggles.  Definitely goggles.