Watery Note:
California
20 June 2018
Kathleen is off to Carlsbad, California, this afternoon, and I would say that I’m bracing for excitement, except that would make it sound like fun.
There are all sorts of things that I ought to do while Kathleen is away, but I probably won’t do any of them. Instead, I’ll watch To Rome With Love.
I said to Kathleen, I’m thinking of three movies. One of them is Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love. The second is about a honeymooning couple who get split up in Rome and have many adventures. The third is about a nobody who becomes the center of media attention for no reason. They can’t all be To Rome With Love.
But of course, they are. I checked, on IMDb.
The only thing that I remember about To Rome With Love is the tenor in the shower. What makes this ludicrous joke really funny is that it so elaborately recycles a sketch from Your Show of Shows, “Aggravation Boulevard.” Sid Caesar plays a silent-film star whose voice turns out to be unbearably high and squeaky. Wretched, he takes a walk in the rain and returns to the studio a dreamy baritone. When his voice begins to edge up, Carl Reiner and the others throw buckets of water on him, and his voice drops back down. So he’ll be a movie star once more, just one who’s always singin’ in the rain.