’23 and Me: My Year in Review

Ya see what I did there? 23 — it’s just like the chromosomes!

As we are wont to do this time of year, we take a look back on what we’ve accomplished during the preceding twelvemonth. Did anyone else feel like they got a new lease on life this year? I did somehow, though a cautious one. I am fully cognizant that this year was like a little window of relief between the reign of 45 (and the economic and public health fallout therefrom)….and next year’s election (and what may or may not be the fallout from THAT). So this year, I took the opportunity to plant a lot of seeds for projects that will help hold me aloft through the coming days, weeks, months, years. There have been clues (and some outright declarations) as to what I have been working on in ’23 in the pages of Travalanche. Some of what’s cooking has been reflected in the content streams.

This year Travalanche celebrated its 15th anniversary. We are about to hit our 7 millionth pageview, as well as our 8,000th post. I lay no claim toward being scholarly in an academic sense, but as an entertaining learn-thing for laypeople, in certain areas, I think I can boast that Travalanche is second to none in what it covers. We’ve written about more than 1,800 vaudeville veterans, for example. I know of no other book or website that can make that claim. This year we added several new sections (most recently, one for fairs) as well as some finding aids for sections with large numbers of posts (e.g, Groucho Marx, Mae West,Buster Keaton, et al.)

Those who have availed themselves of the Alpha and Omega of Travalanche on a regular basis are strongly encouraged to support it here so that I can improve it even more. The paying members get exclusive daily posts and clips not available on Travalanche, as well as invitations to live and online events. I wish you’d join my 200 subscribers in my double-secret club! Most who’ve done so say they’ve gotten their minds blown at least a couple of times a week. Again, that link is here.

This year we got a couple of prominent shout outs. We were mentioned in Tre’vell Anderson‘s new bookWe See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film, and were featured as a commentator in a new vaudeville documentary film Sharkey and His Pals. You can see me in an excerpt, talking about Imogene Coca, here. The movie is now in post-production, due out in a few months. That is the beauty of vaudeville, baby! It’s relevant to every soul on the earth from black trans people…to sea lions!

Also this year you could hear me on these podcasts:

I Discuss Edgar Bergen with the gals of The Murphy Brown Podcast (Oct. 5, 2023)

Eve Golden and I Discuss Her New Book About Lupe Vélez (Sept. 30, 2023)

My performance on Heather Quinlan’s Life and Death of Tom Carvel(July 18, 2023)

Avi Wolf and I Discuss Vaudeville in the Gilded Age on Stumbling Colossus(Apr 24, 2023)

Lauren Milberger and I Discuss a Century of George Burns and Gracie Allen (Feb. 14, 2023)

In mid-February I gave my first live lecture in three years at The Lambs Club.

We bookended 2023 with two important bicentennial interviews with authors (Dan Rice biographer David Carlyon and Clement Clarke Moore biographer Pamela McColl).

And now the ongoing stuff calculated to yield future bonanzas:

2023 marked the 10th anniversary of the release of my book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. Along with producer Gary Hardcastle I have been working throughout the year on recording an audiobook version to be released by BearManor Media come spring, with vintage music by Archeophone Records. Along with the rollout will be special events, screenings, and online presentations.

May will be all about the Marx Brothers! BearManor is releasing my new book The Marx Brothers Miscellany, with a cover by Noah Diamond and a foreword by Austin Pendleton, slated to drop just in time for MarxFest II, the previously announced festival to celebrate the Marxes. Work on the book and special events for the festival and beyond have been going on behind the scenes for months.

Nor have we abandoned variety entertainment! As depicted in the photo at the tippy top of this post, I produced a series of live comedy/variety shows at QED in Queens in 2023 (my first since 2019), called The Variety Store. I’m working with co-producer Tom Bibla to turn some of the video footage into a viewable format to share lonline in the coming months. At the same time, you may have noticed that Travalanche has had many more posts about television and radio variety shows this year. All of this activity has gone hand in hand with the development of what I intend to be my fourth complete book Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety. It’s about 80% finished at this stage; I hope to have it out for next holiday season. Mindful that that will also be the election (perhaps the most important election of our lives) I’m hoping to roll it out with a talk on the political lessons of variety entertainment throughout the ages.

Believe it or not, work on two OTHER books progressed this year, as well.

One, sadly is actually a collaboration with a deceased colleague. As we reported in July, author, teacher and actress Mari-Lyn Henry passed away this year. It was my honor to be useful in brokering the transfer of her research collection to the Lambs Club this fall, and to be entrusted with the literary future of her three unfinished book projects. I’ve started with the one that’s farthest along and the most promising, which is entitled Change Your Act, or Back to the Woods: The Drama in Vaudeville, 1893-1925. In spirit, I envision the final product to be something like that last Beatles’ song “Now and Then”, or if I may, Spielberg’s AI...a loving and respectful completion of an unfinished work by a surviving colleague.

Early work on Change Your Act, and some quality time spent reading Issac Butler’s excellent recent book on Stanislavski’s system sort of thrust my head back into “legit theatre” for the first time in a long while, and that was most definitely reflected in an increased number of posts about stage directors, theorists, and playwrights on Travalanche this year. The recent death of my old Latin teacher, and my plunge into European languages also sent me into a deep exploration of Ancient and Medieval Theatre (and festival) which was reflected on the blog this year (which shouldn’t be surprising to those who read the early chapters in my books No Applause and Chain of Fools, both of which start their stories in Greece). Links to a lot of that stuff can be found in this post. This reawakened ardor was reflected in an increase of contemporary theatre reviews this year.

I also did quite a bit of work on quite a different sort of book for me, which involved research, travel, interviews, introspection, and pages of writing. Whether it proves to be a true crime book, a novel, or an experimental hybrid, I have no idea, but it has begun.

The end of year is also traditionally a time for taking leave of those that have left us in one way or another. As I have been doing for many years now, I marked some of the more meaningful ones with tributes. You’ll find them here. Just scroll down for a backwards chronology.

On the topic of Dead Celebrities, one other special thing that happened this year for which I’m very grateful is a correspondence with the wonderful biographer and obituarian Eve Golden. You’ll find many references to her and her excellent books throughout Travalanche. If I seem smarter on a particular day, I’ve probably been communicating with her recently. I’ll link you to that Lupe Velez conversation again…here.

Work on various theatreworks (one show in particular which I have been working on for over a decade) has also proceeded apace. This sounds like short shrift, but when you finally see it, the show I mean may well exceed everything else we’ve mentioned here in the splash it makes. We’ve mentioned it here before; it’s an opera mixing elements of the Pied Piper legend, Gilbert and Sullivan; and Universal Horror films, which I’ve been writing with composer David Mallamud. It’s actually one of two projects we’re collaborating on, and I count myself lucky, not just because I’m such a fan of his wit, knowledge and talent, and we’re so sympatico, but I’m in very good company among his other collaborators. It’s been an honor to have been working with him on and off for the past dozen years!

In addition to what we’ve mentioned, some things planned for 2024 include an interview with vaudeville historians Frank Cullen and Donald McNeilly about their terrific new show about Ethel Waters; and celebrations (of some sort) of things like Houdini’s 150th birthday; the 150th birthday of the Lambs; the 60th anniversary of the ’64 New York Worlds Fair; the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Centennial; the Ed Wood Centennial and more.

And….possibly the end of American democracy? Join me in not taking it lying down this time. Let’s muscle our way through it, and succeed in saving this wonderful country by dint of sheer fabulousness. Make big plans, realize them, then tell the Fascist Flibbertigibbets where to get off. Have a Happy New Year in 2024. But more than that, I wish you a happy one in 2025.