{"id":1775,"date":"2006-08-24T09:07:02","date_gmt":"2006-08-24T09:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/24\/try_to_remember\/"},"modified":"2006-08-24T09:07:02","modified_gmt":"2006-08-24T09:07:02","slug":"try_to_remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/24\/try_to_remember\/","title":{"rendered":"TRY TO REMEMBER — THE FANTASTICKS, JERRY ORBACH, THE INTERNET AND ME"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK – so I should be used to it by now.  I’ve been — as I often say, a walking demographic Baby Boomer as long as I can remember.  But on this morning after the re-opening of THE FANTASTICKS*  – which ran off-Broadway for 42 years<\/a>, I read "adults 55+ adapting online<\/a>."  Of course they are — sooner or later whatever I’m doing becomes part of a generational wave. <\/p>\n

Don’t worry – there IS a connection.<\/p>\n

I saw THE FANTASTICKS  with my college room mate and her mother during fall vacation of my freshman year.  That was 1964 – four years after it opened.  At the end, all of 18, I was crying so hard that the woman sitting next to me – probably 25 or s0 – handed me the rose her date must have given her at dinner.  I kept it on the wall of my room for years.  <\/p>\n

El Gallo — the irresistible seducer  and originator of the "hurt’ without which "the heart is hollow" —  was first played by Jerry Orbach<\/a>.  [hear him sing Try to Remember here<\/a>.]  I met him when I was close to 50 – and told him I’d seen the show when I was 18.  His face just changed – not a trace of Lennie Briscoe but a combination of affection, nostalgia and pleasure.  We spoke a bit more and then I apologized for approaching him at a reception and acting like a groupie.  He replied "You saw the Fantasticks when you were EIGHTEEN!  That wasn’t an interruption that was a pleasure."  So I guess the story had the same impact on the cast that it had on girls like me.  "Please God please," the young girl ("the girl") cries out – "don’t let me be NORMAL!"  That was me alright.  Please let me be singular – not like the others!  <\/p>\n

Well it hasn’t turned out that way.  Whatever I come to, my peers hit within a year or so.  It made me a great talk show producer – never a visionary too far ahead to be relevant, just enough ahead to know what story to do next.  I guess that’s why I accommodated to my role as close enough to normal but with an edge — rather than the downtown woman I had once wished to be.<\/p>\n

I knew about this headlong Boomer journey online because my older son, in the industry, had read a similar study.  Last weekend I told him that I seemed to be getting a lot more online consulting work and his theory was that companies need boomer consultants more because more "civilian" boomers are finally hitting the web.  I always knew we would; the tribe that is the baby boom loves to be connected.  The web was a perfect home for us.  Just like THE FANTASTICKS.<\/p>\n

*OK Feminist friends, there’s an element of sexism in this original fairy tale (they’ve rewritten the only really troubling song) but I have chosen to ignore it.  It just can’t trump the wonder and poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK – so I should be used to it by now.  I’ve been — as I often say, a walking demographic Baby Boomer as long as I can remember.  But on this morning after the re-opening of THE FANTASTICKS*  – which ran off-Broadway for 42 years, I read "adults 55+ adapting online."  Of course they … Continue reading TRY TO REMEMBER — THE FANTASTICKS, JERRY ORBACH, THE INTERNET AND ME<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,27,8,51],"tags":[626,107,22,693,2563,2562,2564],"class_list":["post-1775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-current-affairs","category-music","category-webtech","tag-age","tag-baby-boom-2","tag-boomer","tag-internet","tag-jerry-ohrbach","tag-the-fantasticks","tag-try-to-remember"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-sD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}