... softly hummed a Cole Porter song...

(Beware! Ken's rambling again!)

Shortly before Rosa asked me to get out of her life, I took on a fondness for Cole Porter. I couldn't get enough... mostly because you can't find good Cole Porter cds, well, anywhere! Sure, there are Cole Porter songbooks but nobody records Cole Porter anymore. Why is that?

Now that I'm back in theatre, I wonder why this love of Cole Porter hasn't translated into performing in a music. Why? Well, probably because most musicals suck. You know they suck because of the powerful wind you feel when you walk into the audition. Worse, nobody does Cole Porter musicals - say, like, "Kiss Me Kate" or "Anything Goes". (I'll have you know I just pulled those off the web. I couldn't remember one single Cole Porter musical because nobody puts them on!) They keep doing the same, old, tired, once-a-hit-so-long-ago-your-grandma-was-hot-then musicals that I couldn't care less about!

But I'd love to perform Cole Porter's songs. He had such incredible wit and a real sense of fun! I'd love to go on stage and sing:

You're the top! You're the Colosseum,
You're the top! You're the Louvre Museum,
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss,
You're a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet,
You're Mickey Mouse.
You're the Nile, You're the Tow'r of Pisa,
You're the smile on the Mona Lisa.
I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop...

Can you get the rest?

I'm often wondering what the hell I'm doing these days. Oh, it's the same as always. I work. I've been assigned more commercials to write. I act in this... wonderful play. I go to the gym when I'm not smoking, which isn't often, and drink when I am smoking... which is. I do everything I can to place Rosa far, far from my head... and it is in those times when I realize that what I'm really doing is making time pass until I'm dead. Until I won't think of Rosa any more. So, then, is that what I'm doing? Just using up time?

If I act in a musical, what difference will it make? Everything has lost its flavour. Nothing thrills me as it used to. With Rosa gone, I feel dead inside. Will that end? I don't know but it's been going on now for three and a half years.

I've got about a month until my birthday. That's going to be painful, spending it alone as I so often do. Then, a month later, Rosa will be delivering. That's going to kill me - and I can't let it. I can't imagine how I'm going to get through those events and, on top of that, then I'll have the holidays to get through - alone. Knowing all of this, I still manage to make it from one day to the next - this amazes me; I don't know how I do it. As one wit once said, "Habit."

What does this have to do with Cole Porter? I guess I can tie anything back to Rosa...