July 10: Sweet Sense of Independence, "Hamilton," My Legacy

Young Merton's summer of independence . . .

Bonnemaman was the one who suffered most from my reticence.  For years she had been sitting at home wondering what Pop was doing in the city all day, and now that I was developing the same wandering habits it was quite natural for her to imagine strange things about me, too.

But the only wickedness I was up to was that I roamed around the city smoking cigarettes and hugging my on sweet sense of independence.  

I found out that Grosset and Dunlap published more than the Rover Boys.  They brought out reprints of writers like Hemingway and Aldous Huxley and D. H. Lawrence and I devoured them all, on the cool sleeping porch of the house at Douglaston, while the moths of the summer darkness came batting and throbbing against the screens, attracted by my light that burned until all hours.

Most of the time I was running into my uncle's room to borrow his dictionary, and when he found out what words I was looking up he arched his eyebrows and said:  "What are you reading, anyway?"

Sweet sense of independence.

That's what my daughter will be tasting this weekend.  She, her boyfriend, and another friend are going on a road trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula for a few days.  By themselves.  In my daughter's car.  It's not that I don't trust my daughter's judgement.  She's got a good head on her shoulders.  It's just the letting-go part of this little adventure that I'm having a problem with.

My daughter and I watched Hamilton this evening.  It has been one of my daughter's favorite musical soundtracks since the show premiered on Broadway.  That's four years of listening.  She could literally sing the entire show if she wanted to.  I do love the music, as well.  And I knew the plot of the show.  Nothing was a surprise.  I knew that American defeated Great Britain in the Revolutionary War with the help of Lafayette.  George Washington stepped down as President after two terms.  I knew that Hamilton cheated on his wife, and that his son was killed in a duel.  Hamilton supported Thomas Jefferson in his bed for the Oval Office, and Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel.  Knew all of that going in.

It was the ending of the show that did me in tonight.  The question of who is going to tell your story. what your legacy will be.  When Phillipa Soo was singing Eliza Schuyler-Hamilton's last song, I found myself literally crying.  Not just tearing up.  I wasn't expecting that.  The idea that Eliza spent the rest of her life telling Hamilton's story, putting herself "back in the narrative"--the depth of her devotion and love profoundly affected me.

I'm not sure what kind of legacy I'm going to leave behind, and I doubt that there's going to be an Eliza in my life to tell my story.  Chances are, these blog posts are going to do that job.  Somebody 70 or 80 or 100 years from now may be reading these very words because of my poems.  Or because of something my son or daughter did.  I may be a footnote to their lives.  Or maybe that future person is doing a dissertation on the pandemic of 2020, and I'm eventually going to be cited or quoted as a reference.

Let me clear up something right now:  I'm a mess.  I'm full of insecurities and contradictions.  I'm not always nice or smart.  At the moment, the trajectory of my life seems unclear.  I'm never going to be President of the United States, although Donald Trump has proven that anybody with enough money and connections with Russia can become a resident of the Oval Office.  Perhaps I'll write something of note some day.  Marriage and family--well, that's all in God's hands, as everything is.

Maybe my daughter and son will write a musical about me some day.  It will take Broadway by storm, win all kinds of Tony Awards, and, eventually, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  My kids will speak my narrative.  I hope it will be a good one, something they can be proud of, despite all of my character flaws.

Perhaps, as my daughter is sitting in her hotel tomorrow night, after a day of travel and sight-seeing and fishing, she will take out a notebook and jot down a random line of poetry that will become the opening lyric of that musical:  "How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore / And a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot / In the Caribbean by providence impoverished / In squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?"  Or something catchy like that.

Here's the thing:  you don't get to decide your legacy.  My job in this whole process:  living the best life that I am able.  The rest is in the hands of other people, long after I'm gone.

Hopefully, they'll write about the miracle of this night, with my daughter.  How we both sat, crying on the couch, at the end of Hamilton.  How my daughter, filled with her sweet sense of independence, on the cusp of her adventure, looked at me, after rubbing her eyes, and said, "That was really good."

And for that moment in his legacy, his narrative, Saint Marty gives thanks.

June 10: Bike Ride, Tony Awards, Classic Saint Marty

Welcome to Sunday afternoon. 

I have not accomplished a whole heck of a lot today.  After church, I decided to get some exercise.  So, I went for a bike ride.  It was about 75 degrees outside, and I was out and about for some 45 minutes.  My initial goal was to bike down to Negaunee, our neighbor city to the east.  It would have been about a six-mile round trip.  I quickly shelved that plan after realizing a very important fact:  there are tons of hills on the path. 

Therefore, I simply biked around my fair city.  I quickly discovered another important fact:  there are tons of hills in my home town.  I think it's the only place in the world where it's uphill both ways, wherever you go.  It was uphill on the way out, and uphill on the way home.  I was sweaty, tired, and a little sore when I finally pulled into my driveway.

Tonight, I will be watching the Tony Awards with my wife, daughter, and my daughter's boyfriend.  He's really thrilled with the prospect, I'm sure.  My daughter is kind of a theater geek.  Go figure.  A lifetime of dancing and music has sort of warped her.  In a good way.  My wife and I, of course, have been theater geeks since childhood.

Those are my big plans for this evening.  Nothing too earth-shattering.

Six years ago, after a weekend of dance recitals, my plans on this day were pretty much the same . . .

June 10, 2012:  Dance Recital Part 2, Tony Awards

I spent the afternoon in a dark theater for the matinee of my daughter's dance recital, or, as I like to to call it, Dance Recital Part 2.  It was, again, about two and a half hours long, but I love watching my daughter perform.  She's so joyful and funny.  And she didn't disappoint.  Her solo dance was exquisite.  Of course, I'm a little biased.  I mean, I've been her manager since the beginning of her career a little over eleven years ago.  I deserve to brag and be sentimental.

Now, I'm sitting in my living room, watching the 2012 Tony Awards.  It's a good way to end a long weekend of theater.  I mean, who doesn't love Neil Patrick Harris, except some small-minded, humorless homophobe?  I think even Mitt Romney loves Neil Patrick Harris, in his presumptive Republican presidential candidate way.  That is to say, by possibly getting his picture taken with Neil in a vain attempt to appear hip and open-minded.

Anyway, that's all I have to say tonight.  I'm going to watch the Tony Awards now.  They're doing a rocking number from the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar at the moment.  It's going to be a good night.

Saint Marty is ready to kick back and eat some licorice, which, as everyone knows, is the perfect Tony Awards snack.

Tony Awards.  Dance Recital weekend.  School is done.  My daughter is going fishing tomorrow with her boyfriend.  My son is staying at grandma's house tonight.  I have writing projects to complete. 

Saint Marty is thankful for summer days.

June 11: Wife's Surgery, Classic Saint Marty, "War Story"

The day before my wife's surgery.  It's gray and rainy.  Earlier this afternoon, I mowed my lawn, because I don't know when I will have the opportunity to do it in the next week or so.  I have a feeling that the next few days are going to be very hectic.

So, I am trying to relax some today.  I will watch the Tony Awards tonight.  (I checked.  They are actually on tonight.).  Then, early tomorrow morning, I will drive my wife to the hospital.  I have to be honest:  I am a little worried.  I know she is going to be fine.  She has a first-rate surgeon and will receive great care.  However, I can't help myself.  Her life is going to be in other people's hands.

So, I'm asking anybody who reads this post to say a prayer for her tonight.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired four years ago, when I had different worries and concerns.

June 11, 2013:  English, Books, Prayer of the Week

...They said they were schoolteachers and that they'd just come from Chicago and that they were going to start teaching at some convent on 168th Street or 186th Street or one of those streets way the hell uptown.  The one next to me, with the iron glasses, said she taught English and her friend taught history and American government.  Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain books for English.  Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with lovers and all in them...

Holden meets these two nuns in a diner, and he strikes up a conversation with them.  He learns they are schoolteachers, obviously.  The one who teaches English starts asking him questions about books and plays he's studied.  Of course, being a teenage boy, he mind drifts toward sex.  Holden's mind almost always drifts toward sex.  He wonders how a nun who teaches literature deals with the "sexy" material.

It really doesn't matter if you're a nun or Brad Pitt.  If you're an English teacher, students feel uncomfortable discussing things of a sexual nature in a classroom.  I've been teaching college-level English students for over twenty years, and I can say, without a doubt, that, even though sex is on all their minds, they don't want to talk about it.  It's like the elephant in the room that everybody's ignoring.  That's one of the challenges of teaching young adults.

I love teaching.  I love the hormonal intricacies of young minds.  I love making students see things they've never seen before.  I taught a class a year or so ago called Good Books.  I chose books that all focused on mental illness.  We read about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and the history of the medical treatment of mental illness in the United States.  It was a great class.  In fact, I would rank it as the best class I've ever taught.  I could actually see the changes in my students' attitudes and thinking.  It was exciting.

I would love to teach full-time at the university.  It's my dream job.  I've been doing it part-time for most of my adult working life.  I don't do it because it pays so well (it doesn't).  I don't do it for the glory (there isn't any).  I do it because I can make a difference in the world.  That may sound corny, but it's what I truly believe.  I can open minds and change people's ideas.  There's nothing better than that.

So, my prayer of the week is about teaching.

Dear God,

Yeah, I know.  You're getting tired of hearing from me.  But You did say that You'd always listen if I wanted to talk.

Well, You know I how I feel about teaching.  You know it's what I've wanted to do full-time for as along as I can remember.  I'm just asking if You could help me out a little bit here.  I'd like some job opportunity to open up at the university.  You don't have to kill one of the poets a week before classes start in the fall.  I don't want anything catastrophic to befall anyone.  I would just appreciate a few little miracles.

Here's what I need:  some publications, some awards in writing contests, and a full-time teaching assignment.  On the scale of miracles, those are pretty small, when You think about it.  The Israelites needed You to part the Red Sea and write some commandments down on stones.  All I'm asking for is an itty, bitty little job at a university.

Thanks for hearing me out.  I know You've got my back, no matter what, so I'll try not to worry (even if my job at the hospital gets eliminated).  You are the God of enough.  You've always given me and my family enough to get by.  I trust You.  Like I have any choice.

Your child,

Saint Marty

It's all about trust

And a poem for tonight . . .

War Story

by:  Martin Achatz

My wife wants to have her breasts cut off.

After babies and breast feeding and mothering,

She wants a surgeon to remove them,

Like infected tonsils or a mole gone black.

She waits for her breasts to attack her,

To fill up with tiny concentration camps

Spilling ash into her blood.

In the dark, she presses her fingers

Around her nipples, into the soft tissue,

Searching for Nazis.

I want to tell her that she's fine,

She's worrying for nothing.

Yet, in the early morning, I know

She hears her mother's last breath again,

Cutting the night in two

                        Like a freight train.

June 12: Dance Recital Weekend, Tony Awards, Classic Saint Marty

I am at the other end of the Dance Recital weekend.  I have survived a week of rehearsals and two performances.  During the past five or six days, I have put about an extra two hundred miles on my car chauffeuring my kids back and forth.  I am tired and happy.  My kids did really well, and now my daughter is at Bible camp for the week.  Dropped her off about an hour ago.  I feel a little guilty in saying that I'm looking forward to a few days of relative calm.

I am a little exhausted at the moment.  I had little time to relax (unless you count dozing off in the auditorium during dance rehearsals).  Five days of work await me.  I have a feeling that it's going to be a very long week.  My only consolation is that tomorrow will be a relatively quiet day at my new job, and I will be working by myself.  Solitude.

Tonight, however, I will be watching the Tony Awards to see Lin-Manuel Miranda take home a boatload of prizes for Hamilton.  And I will be eating Scoop Fritos and cheese dip (it's sort of a tradition for me).  It will be a good night, full of people breaking into spontaneous songs on television.

The episode of Classic Saint Marty I have chosen to share today is only about a year old.  It was written during a time when there was still hope for my sister's recovery from brain lymphoma.  In fact, I don't think she'd received that diagnosis yet.  I was thinking a lot about miracles at the time and the need for them in my life.

June 16, 2015:  Weeping Building, Miracles, Sally Wen Mao, "Monstera Deliciosa"

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

Ives has just had a near death experience.  As he walks the streets of Manhattan, he starts having visions of God's goodness.  Four colored winds spinning in the sky.  The sun, glowing red and huge.  Car horns sounding like celestial trumpets.  As the above passage says, anything seems possible.

I've been contemplating miracles recently.  Ives thinks of his near-death experiences as some kind of divine vision granted to him.  I'm not so sure that's accurate.  I think most people go through their days with blinders on.  Ives' blinders have simply been removed for a little while.  He's seeing the world from a God's-eye-view. 

I think I'm a lot like the blindered Ives.  Driving to work, talking to patients, eating lunch, walking to my car at the end of the day, I probably miss more miracles than contained in the gospels.  For instance, near the medical center where I work, there's a bike path in the woods.  I know there are albino deer in that forest.  One night, as I was leaving the university after teaching an evening class, I drove by a cemetery.  Near the cemetery fence was a family of deer.  When the headlights of my car spotlighted them, the deer leaped into the darkness, hurdling headstones and hedges like souls racing to heaven.

Everyday miracles.  I need to open my eyes and look around more often.  Maybe I'll see the moon singing or the university clock tower weeping.  Who knows?  The whole world is full of wonder.  Sure, I'm sort of stuck in a swamp of worry right now.  But I know that my very existence--my lungs' habit of breathing, my heart's habit of beating, my pores' habit of sweating--all of the things that keep me alive are impossible miracles of creation.

Sally Wen Mao's poem for tonight is about one of those miracles of nature that most people don't even stop to notice.

Saint Marty is taking some time tonight to give thanks for miracles.

Monstera Deliciosa

by:  Sally Wen Mao

I'm a monster because I poison the children.
They dance around me and my fronds flutter
with holes.  They invite:  Eat my fanged fruit.

Each scale will peel off easy, but if you eat it
unripe, it will steal your voice.  Your gums
will blister little stars.  You'll vomit, swell, tremble.

When ripe, it is sublime.  Better than banana,
soft mango, sweeter than wild yellow rambutan
coated in syrup.  It only takes one year.  Bite.

Bon appetit!

June 7: Dance Recital Weekend, Lost Button, Exhaustion, Classic Saint Marty

Sorry for my absence yesterday, folks.  It was my son and daughter's dance recital weekend.  Yesterday, I was in a dark auditorium all day long.  Then I played the pipe organ for a church service.  After that, it was right back to the auditorium for the actual performance.

I have seen so many sequins and fringe and feathers these past two days that I feel like I've lived through a drag show apocalypse.  My daughter was graceful and gorgeous.  My son was adorable and funny.  There was one minor catastrophe when, for about an hour, a button was lost.  (Yes, that's right.  I said a button.  It caused my daughter to have a slight breakdown.  Eventually, the button was located.)

Now, my daughter has lost a card given to her by one of her dance instructors.  She has eviscerated her dance bag, leaving the contents all over the living room floor.  Now, she is sulking in the bathroom.  Correction, she just stomped off to her bedroom.  She's a little exhausted.

I have nothing brilliant or funny to say.  I'm weary.  Plus, the Tony Awards are on right now.

Tonight's episode of Classic Saint first aired three years ago, when I was living for a year with Charles Dickens.

June 7, 2012:  Frightful Cry, Ghosts, I Do Believe in Spooks

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

A nice, horrible little description of the apparition of Jacob Marley. It could have been written by Stephen King, if Stephen King took it upon himself to write a holiday story with Christian overtones about the redemption of a rich bastard. Scrooge literally has to be scared shitless before he sits down and starts listening to what Marley has to tell him. In particular, the whole detail of the lower jaw is a little disconcerting.

It was common practice in Dickens’ time to tie a bandage around the head of a corpse to keep its mouth from falling open. Funeral directors these days have more subtle ways of accomplishing this feat. I believe I once read that, in some cases, the lips of the deceased person are sewn shut to prevent any unsightly yawning during public viewing. Having worked as a hospital housekeeper, I have been around a few recently dead people. Sometimes, if family was present, a towel was placed under the corpse’s chin to close the mouth. Other times, I saw dead people being wheeled down to the morgue with their mouths gaping open, much as Dickens described Marley above, as if they were bored with the entire process of passing away.

This whole passage reminds me of one thing: I am afraid of ghosts. Yes, I believe in ghosts, spirits, phantoms of the dead, poltergeists, specters. Whatever you want to call them, I believe in them. Now, I don’t want to get into all the details of my ghost philosophy. To make a long story short, I think ghosts are souls that have unfinished business here on this planet. Marley’s unfinished business is doing penance for a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Some people have told me that my belief in spirits doesn’t particularly jibe with my Christian faith. I don’t care. I’m like the Cowardly Lion. I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks.

My belief in ghosts is also bolstered by my friend who used to be a hospice nurse. She has told about many of her experiences with the sick and dying, and they all point to the existence of an afterlife. That doesn’t mean I want to be some kind of ghost whisperer. Unlike Haley Joel Osment, I do not want to see dead people. I live in a house that’s over 100 years old. My biggest fear has always been stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night and running into my own version of Jacob Marley, chains and everything. The worst I’ve encountered is a little black mole skittering across the floor. (I reacted the same way to the mole that I would to a ghost: I screamed and jumped on top of the toilet.)

Obviously, as a Christian, I believe there’s something beyond blogging. I still have my eyes on sainthood. I certainly don’t have my eyes on wandering the world, wrapped in chains, moaning and lamenting my eternal fate. That would kind of suck.

Saint Marty doesn’t want to end up as a sidekick ghost in a Dickens tale.

Unlike this kid, I don't want to see dead people

August 25: Watching the Emmy Awards, Shallow Stars, "Web" Dip

Here I sit, watching the 66th annual Emmy Awards.  I've been bathing in the glow of self-congratulatory back-slapping and vapid humor.  There the shallow stars stand onstage, looking winded and shocked, saying things like, "This is just too much.  I don't believe this.  I didn't think I was going to win this year."  Then they dig into a sleeve or pocket or bodice and remove an acceptance speech.

Every year, I watch these awards shows.  Emmy Awards.  Oscars.  Golden Globes.  Tony Awards.  For me, it's an exercise in mockery and envy.  Beautiful, rich people who have everything possible awarding each other gold statuettes for being better than other beautiful, rich people who have everything possible.  That pretty much sums it up.

I haven't seen anything too surprising.  The same actors are winning this year who won last year.  So, it's like watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory on TBS.  It even has Jim Parsons.

So, my question is:

Will I ever win some self-congratulatory, back-slapping award (Pulitzer, National Book Award, Nobel Prize, Blogger of the Year, Best Father Who Made His Son Cry a Little Tonight Award)?

And the answer from E. B. White is:

The crickets sang in the grasses.  They sang the song of summer's ending, a sad, monotonous song.  "Summer is over and gone," they sang.  "Over and gone, over and gone.  Summer is dying, dying."

Well, that's depressing.

Saint Marty's gonna call this post done.

Really?  Again?

June 8: Tony Awards, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

The 2014 Tony Awards are on tonight.  Even though I haven't seen any plays in New York for, oh, let me see, 13 years, I will watch the show.  I haven't been to a play in a couple of years.  I used to have season tickets to the university's theater season, but it became a little too expensive.  I think the last musical I saw was Shrek with my daughter.  It was a traveling Broadway production that stopped in Green Bay, and I took my daughter for her birthday.

I love theater.  I used to act and direct in local productions all the time.  Then, life happened.  Children.  Work.  Mental illness.  I had to prioritize, and theater ended up far down on my list of important activities.  It still is.  But, one night a year, I unleash my theater geek.  Tony night.

I love theater people, because they're a very accepting group.  It doesn't matter whether you're straight or gay, short or tall, fat or thin, red or yellow or black or white.  Theater people accept you for who you are or who you aren't.  Tolerance is their creed.

That's what today's episode of Saint Marty is about.  Tolerance.  It first aired three years ago.

June 8, 2011:  Hatred, New Poem, Tolerance

Today, I've been thinking a lot about hatred and intolerance.  It always amazes me to encounter blatant bigotry--racism or sexism or ageism.  Homophobia.  Since my wife was diagnosed with bipolar, I've encountered a great deal of misunderstanding about mental illness.  All biases are based on fear.  People are afraid of things they don't understand, that are out of their scope of experience. Mental illness, unless you suffer from it or know a person who suffers from it, generates a great deal of discomfort.  It's a category of illness that is still socially acceptable to mock, fear, or reject.

I have spent the last ten years battling the hatred and fear of mental illness.  It's easy to blame a person with mental illness for being different.  My wife once bought a pair of mountain bikes for five hundred dollars when she was manic.  She couldn't control herself.  It was her illness.  Most people in my family don't understand that.  People can't control skin color or gender, but most people can control their behaviors.  Unless brain chemistry gets in the way.

I'm teaching a Good Books class this fall.  I've decided to focus on novels and memoirs dealing with mental illness, because I want to promote understanding and acceptance.  People need to realize that mental illness isn't a personal choice.  An African American can't choose to be white.  A man or woman, for the most part, can't choose a gender.  And a person with a mental illness can't choose to be mentally sound.  That's what I want my students to get this fall.

I know people who hate.  For the most part, their hatred stems from personal insecurity.  They feel somehow inadequate in their own lives, so they look for people who are weaker to attack, to blame for their problems.  Rather than hate the haters, maybe I should pity them, try to understand them.  That's not an easy task.  But it's a task, as a Christian, I'm supposed to accept, even embrace.  Dammit.

My new poem is about a person who hates.  I use humor.  I mock.  I try to point out the absurdity of hatred.

Sing with Saint Marty:


We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

Parable of Hate

There was once a proctologist

Who went on vacations

To meet new people to hate.

He traveled to Texas

So he could say the words

Spic and wetback, slap

Locals on their shoulders,

Drink tequila shots, eat

Rattlesnake cooked over

Fires filled with smoke, venom.

He flew to San Francisco,

Ogled fags and queens,

Watched them parade along

Streets, up and down hills

In heels and fishnets,

Wished he could breathe

His repulsion into their

Bloodstreams, got nostalgic

For the early days of AIDS.

His next stop, the Upper Peninsula

Of Michigan, where he hit

A doe with his rented Audi,

Told his traveling companions

The problem with the U. P.:

Too many deer and Indians.

He blamed the Blacks

Of New Orleans for being

Too stupid and poor

To flee the waters of Katrina.

His latest trip, scuba diving

In the seas of Guam,

A place peopled by fat,

Lazy Polynesians, heifers

So unhealthy he couldn’t

Eat the whole week,

Survived on straight shots

Of spite and scorn.  The proctologist

Always returned from his journeys

Sure of his place in the world.

Doctor.  Healer of assholes.
Physician, heal thyself.
 

Code dickhead, Code dickhead

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 10: Dance Recital Part 2, Tony Awards, New Cartoon

I spent the afternoon in a dark theater for the matinee of my daughter's dance recital, or, as I like to to call it, Dance Recital Part 2.  It was, again, about two and a half hours long, but I love watching my daughter perform.  She's so joyful and funny.  And she didn't disappoint.  Her solo dance was exquisite.  Of course, I'm a little biased.  I mean, I've been her manager since the beginning of her career a little over eleven years ago.  I deserve to brag and be sentimental.

Now, I'm sitting in my living room, watching the 2012 Tony Awards.  It's a good way to end a long weekend of theater.  I mean, who doesn't love Neil Patrick Harris, except some small-minded, humorless homophobe?  I think even Mitt Romney loves Neil Patrick Harris, in his presumptive Republican presidential candidate way.  That is to say, by possibly getting his picture taken with Neil in a vain attempt to appear hip and open-minded.

Anyway, that's all I have to say tonight.  I'm going to watch the Tony Awards now.  They're doing a rocking number from the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar at the moment.  It's going to be a good night.

Saint Marty is ready to kick back and eat some licorice, which, as everyone knows, is the perfect Tony Awards snack.

Confessions of Saint Marty