Wagons Ho!
by Joanna Gleason • Dec 3, 2004
Joanna Gleason is back in New York City and before you know it, she'll be back on the boards. Starting January 31, she'll be a part of the talented company of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, her first Broadway show since 1991. As she drove across country with her husband Chris Sarandon and dogs Joe and Paddy, Gleason kept the following online journal of her adventures. Thanks for the memories, Joanna--and welcome back!
_____________________________________________________
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9
HOLLAND TUNNEL
Several years ago I was singing a Christmas concert with the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles. I have become very close to this fabulous group of men--singing with them, staging concerts... I have cherished my times with them. At this particular concert, I was singing the introduction to "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and I was overcome. The lyrics are "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually do...and although I know it's a long road back, I promise you...I'll be home for..." Anyway, it was all about New York.
And now, as we headed to the Holland Tunnel on the I-78 and I was looking at the Statue of Liberty, I was thinking of the lyric. Just thinking. I was very quiet and my chest was growing full, my throat tight. Chris reached over and took my hand while he drove. After a minute he said, "Your wish has come true."
I'm home. And it was a long road back. All is calm, all is bright. Have wonderful holidays and celebrate each other. And if you see a black dog frozen to one spot on the sidewalk with a "Why me?" look on his face and an old yellow one leaping at dumpsters for the all-you-can-eat early bird special, it's Paddy and Joe the Dog.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8
VIRGINIA
It's dark now in the hills of Virginia. We have spent the entire day weaving through the glory of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and up the corridor of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. At dawn in Nashville, we walked the dogs to the full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Metro Park--Centennial Park I think it might have been called. It was foggy and very beautiful. The odd small fir tree had Christmas lights on it, a single strand, a single color, a single, subtle reminder that the holidays are upon us.
They say that holidays are notorious times for a rise in highway incidents, accidents and worse, and I think the statistics must include roadkill. Today we saw so many critters gone to their great reward that I would be loathe to order any specials on the truck stop menu tomorrow. One very large thing looked, I'm pretty sure, like a kangaroo. Chris said no.
We joked before we left about driving through the "red" states to get to New York. But there was a huge Kerry sign, unmolested, ungraffitied on a rise in Oklahoma next to the interstate. And there were many local Texas bumperstickers angry over many current policies. If I thought the three old men in baseball caps and flannel shirts in a coffee shop in Tennessee were all poster boys for the NRA, I would, and was, as it turned out, be wrong. They were all enraged that a son-in-law of one let his toddler hold a gun. "Don't own one, never have," the bride's father barked.
Some states were red by reputation and ballot count, but in the heart of one was a young man working the register at a gas station who saw our California license plate and wanted to talk about organic gardening. We did. He had just voted in his first election. Voted blue, if you will. We was wishing that there were only a popular vote so he could "see exactly to the number how I lost fair and square." He had a point.
Red or blue, we were called Ma'am or Sir by anybody with whom we interacted. Not just front desk people and waitresses, but people who wanted to pet Paddy and Joe, people just holding doors as they preceded us into a place, or thanked us for holding it for them. This was true from Texas on, and I liked it. It didn't seem deferential, just polite. A way of saying that even if I don't know you, I will suspend judgement about who I think you are based on your license plate or the fact that you, Ma'am me are wearing all black and big dark glasses and lipstick at seven in the morning.
We need this civility. We need gestures of understanding and...ya know what? WE NEED PEOPLE NOT TO COME TO BROADWAY SHOWS WEARING SHORTS AND FLIP-FLOPS. We are working hard up here, folks. Find a pair of socks.
Anyway, my favorite line in The Philadelphia Story is this: "The time to make up your mind about people is never."
My dog Joe has, we have discovered, an opposable thumb...took off his collar last night. We think it's cause he's sure he's being dragged across America in the witness relocation program...
Paddy, our old girl, will eat anything, much like me, so her new tag for NYC will have her returned to Zabar's if lost...
We're off on the last leg in about 20 minutes. I am so excited. One more note as we hit the Holland Tunnel.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________ TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
I love grits. Grits with gravy, biscuits, some chopped up mystery meat... Grits with maple syrup... Chris went into the restaurant this morning to get us some breakfast and ordered me an egg white omelette and grits. I walked the dogs and literally hopped at the thought of my grits. He appeared with the styrofoam container and I opened the lid. Hash browns, no grits. I ate them.
I am able, like my hero the hummingbird, to consume forty-seven times my own weight every day and I'm on my way. I have fallen so off my eight-shows-a-week regime that I'll be lucky to get a tour of Hairspray soon. I have a bag of Cheetos in the back, unopened, like smokers who keep a cigarette in a plexiglass case. I've just opened the bag a tiny bit for it to breathe.
There are, by my hasty count in a moving car, sixty-four places to eat just off the interstate between Little Rock and Memphis. What if you were only going from Little Rock to Memphis? Do you need all those choices?
By the way, driving into Memphis at dusk was an awesome experience. The Mississippi River was sparkling, the Mud Island pyramid loomed huge and was falling into shadow. The miraculous St. Jude's Hospital was right there welcoming pilgrims whose causes were no longer lost.
We have traveled eighteen hundred miles as I write this, mostly cleanly slicing through a state and glimpsing only its cities' outskirts; near railways, by airports. This is not how to "see the U.S.A.," but it has made me wonder.
What holds a country together?
I cannot hold forth on so unwieldy a topic, but I offer a small, digestible, if you'll forgive me, observation.
Food. We agree about food. I have never heard a candidate promise more food. They promise health care and tax relief and better schools, but they never mention food to the electorate because they know the voters by and large can eat. If we weren't allowed to eat for two weeks before the election, I wonder who would win. The undernourished among us don't vote, so they are not courted, which made me think. What happened to the "chicken in every pot?"
What holds a relationship together? Gum.
I am a fairly offensive backseat driver. I'm not technically a control freak, the technicality being that I precede my barking order by shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Well, do what you like, but..." So, today, I was pretty irritating to Chris, who is grace and even-temperedness itself. He blew, in no small, graceful or even-tempered way.
In silence we stopped at a Cracker Barrel Yes! We found another one! I went to order food as he walked the dogs and at the cashier's desk there was a pile of Dentyne. I smiled. Right next to it was a pile of Beeman's gum. Bigger smile. Beeman's was my obsession when I was a teenager. I would buy it after school while walking home, hide it so my brother couldn't find it, chew it surreptitiously in class This took the skill of a Tai Chi master and a poker face. When Chris was a boy, he would pray to a small, etched tin icon of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus. He prayed for Dentyne, and while he knelt there, his mother, hiding behind the door, would take a piece and throw it at him, usually hitting him on the forehead. He thought it was a miracle, but it was an act of love.
I fantasized about buying him the Dentyne. Then, while looking for him as he walked the dogs, I fantasized about having him come looking for me, see the Beeman's and buy some for me. A sort of first-draft-Gift-of-the-Magi fantasy. But he didn't need a miracle from me; he needed an act of love. I walked to the van to apologize. The door was open and Chris was leaning against it. There was music playing. It was our favorite CD from when we first fell in love.
Better than gum.
Tip: What holds southern cornbread together? Never eat it without a note from your cardiologist. If the Macabbees had gotten hold of this batch, they could have burned their oil lamps another eight days.
Happy Hanukkah.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________ MONDAY, DECEMBER 6
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA
Well, yesterday we were borne aloft by the adrenaline of the whole thing--the drive, the move, the adventures and the chance to return to the city where we used to live. We hit Albuquerque last night--twelve hours on the road, one new time zone. We were psyched. In this state of grace, I chose a motel out of a book that tells you where dogs are welcome, and I should have guessed from the price that their main clientele must have been dogs with the occasional human. No names, but the soap was half used and the mattress had the dented shape of a German Shepherd. And someone chewed the drapes.
Today we departed in a small blizzard, me at the wheel. I don't know if I was trying to tie yesterday's record but as I was zipping through a white-out, Chris said, "You know, Cantinflas, it's okay if we come in second..." We stopped a few times, particularly in Texas, where we traversed the panhandle.
Texas is large. You know all of this, but it is so striking. Really, really large like an entire country and the few people we chatted with at various restaurants, particularly in Amarillo, were as expansive. They live under the biggest sky I have ever seen. We decided to order lunch and eat it in the car so the dogs wouldn't freak there are abandonment issues with Joe... Oh, never mind and the sky opened up with a thunderstorm that shook the van. There were glyphs and pitchforks of lightning and barrels of water falling on us. As we gingerly pulled back onto the Interstate, the horizon was a pinpoint of azure at the end of a corridor of black. Very thrilling. There was so little of a vertical nature that at any point that we could see twenty miles in every direction, broken only once by a rainbow, then another one. I kept looking behind me as Chris drove because I have this recurring dream that I am driving and the road is closing up behind me, but that's another story for another day.
When my son was little, around seven, he told me he wanted to live in Texas. His father and I were divorced and I lived in New York and his father in Los Angeles. I asked him why Texas. He would only say, "Just Texas, that's where."
Between the two of us. Equidistant, not having to choose.
Today I drove through Texas recalling his tiny face and so many chunks of time spent away from him, packing or unpacking his small red tweed suitcase. Chris had put some Beethoven on the CD player, then some Ryan Adams and I was crying for a while. My son is a man now, has been for a while and I had the joy of never leaving him for any length of time these last fourteen years. He's coming into the fat part of his work and dreams. His talent is undeniable and now championed. He is the one who packed my big tweed suitcase and told me to get back to the theater. In my family, we all raise each other.
I opened the "we love dogs" motel guide and decided that Oklahoma City was as much as we needed to do today. I picked a place that shall remain nameless other than to say it rhymes with Aunt Harriet and as I write this, I am sitting in front of a real fire, having eaten a real meal we cooked in a beautiful room, immaculately clean, Chris is watching Monday Night Football with the dogs on his lap.
I am between my homes. Roads open everywhere I look.
Tip: Don't try to give yourself a manicure on the road. Wait 'til you're the passenger.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________ SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
800 miles. Seemed like 750. Easy. You have to give California high marks for winter. The Sierra Nevada Mountains, gorgeous with snow. We were deciding the route up until yesterday. The usual choices--the southern route or the new/old Route 66 now I-40 all the way to the I-95--got momentarily upstaged by the fact that you can take a diagonal route right to New York and never miss a fresh vegetable thanks to Cracker Barrel Restaurants and their cross-country saturation. But then we figured, what good are fresh vegetables when we would hit every blizzard through the Rockies and wind up meeting the Donner party for dinner? And then there are the dogs.
I won't admit this to many people but we are only posing as sane folk with two dogs. We are, in fact, a bit stupid when it comes to Joe and Paddy. One Halloween, we dresssed up Joe as Satan and Paddy as a bride, complete with bouquet. Oh, and we speak for them. Not with dopey voices--that's annoying--but as we know they would sound. Paddy actually does speak, and it's a ringer for the late Barry White. Joe is more high strung, like Don Knotts. Okay, we do use dopey voices.
They saw their first snow today. Flagstaff, Arizona, late afternoon. A fabulous grey sky and big chunky flakes. Paddy went berzerk and ate them. Joe was constantly ruffing his fur to shake them off. It would have been fun to 'speak' for them at that moment, but Chris and I were just cooling off from the "Why stop for gas when it's still got a quarter of a tank"/"Yes, but now the light has gone on and we're 26 miles from a town I've never heard of..." fight. We slid in to the gas station on vapor. I won't say who was the cavalier gas approximater and who was the borderline hysterical person. Personetta.
The Coconino National Forest was picture perfect over-the-river-and-through-the-woods. We popped some CDs in and just flew across Arizona. By the way, both Arizona and New Mexico have rivers called Rio Puerco--Pork River? Pig River? Who's the river-namer anyway?
Tip: Don't do a ballet barre to stretch out at a truck stop. It's pretentious and suspicious.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Dear Broadway.com Ether Bunnies:
Joanna Gleason and the powers that be at Broadway.com have decided it's an intriguing idea for her to chronicle her trip east, as she moves back to New York City for the new musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. For some reason involving a pet psychic she met and an expensive veterinarian, Gleason's driving across the country with her husband Chris Sarandon, two dogs, her laptop and a rented minivan--not to mention Cheetos and a thermos full of something non-caffeinated, which seems useless in the face of driving 12 hours a day. They leave Sunday, the fifth of December and hope to pull into New York before the spring thaw. Or seven days later, whichever comes first.
I don't know why this letter is in the third person as it's me who's writing it. So, I'll send the first installment Sunday night after Chris and Paddy and Joe and I hit our first motel! Wagons ho!
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________
About the author:
Joanna Gleason made her Broadway debut in 1977 in the Cy Coleman/Michael Stewart musical I Love My Wife at the Barrymore Theatre, winning a Theatre World Award for her performance. Gleason earned a Tony Award nomination for 1985's Joe Egg and took home the Best Actress in a Musical Tony for her work as the Baker's Wife in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods in 1988. Other Broadway credits include The Real Thing, Social Security and Nick & Nora, the musical adapation of The Thin Man films. Although Nick & Nora may not have lasted long on Broadway, the show introduced Gleason to co-star Chris Sarandon, her husband since 1994. In recent years, this versatile performer has showed the many sides of her talents by directing off-Broadway's A Letter to Ethel Kennedy and starring in last season's revival of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. But after making a healthy living on screens both big Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Mr. Holland's Opus, Boogie Nights, The Wedding Planner and small TV's Oh Baby, Bette, ER, King of the Hill, Friends, The Practice, The West Wing, Gleason is heading back to Broadway in the smashing new musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In this online diary, the very funny leading lady is heading across the country and taking Broadway.com readers along for the ride.
_____________________________________________________
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9
HOLLAND TUNNEL
Several years ago I was singing a Christmas concert with the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles. I have become very close to this fabulous group of men--singing with them, staging concerts... I have cherished my times with them. At this particular concert, I was singing the introduction to "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and I was overcome. The lyrics are "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually do...and although I know it's a long road back, I promise you...I'll be home for..." Anyway, it was all about New York.
And now, as we headed to the Holland Tunnel on the I-78 and I was looking at the Statue of Liberty, I was thinking of the lyric. Just thinking. I was very quiet and my chest was growing full, my throat tight. Chris reached over and took my hand while he drove. After a minute he said, "Your wish has come true."
I'm home. And it was a long road back. All is calm, all is bright. Have wonderful holidays and celebrate each other. And if you see a black dog frozen to one spot on the sidewalk with a "Why me?" look on his face and an old yellow one leaping at dumpsters for the all-you-can-eat early bird special, it's Paddy and Joe the Dog.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8
VIRGINIA
It's dark now in the hills of Virginia. We have spent the entire day weaving through the glory of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and up the corridor of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. At dawn in Nashville, we walked the dogs to the full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Metro Park--Centennial Park I think it might have been called. It was foggy and very beautiful. The odd small fir tree had Christmas lights on it, a single strand, a single color, a single, subtle reminder that the holidays are upon us.
They say that holidays are notorious times for a rise in highway incidents, accidents and worse, and I think the statistics must include roadkill. Today we saw so many critters gone to their great reward that I would be loathe to order any specials on the truck stop menu tomorrow. One very large thing looked, I'm pretty sure, like a kangaroo. Chris said no.
We joked before we left about driving through the "red" states to get to New York. But there was a huge Kerry sign, unmolested, ungraffitied on a rise in Oklahoma next to the interstate. And there were many local Texas bumperstickers angry over many current policies. If I thought the three old men in baseball caps and flannel shirts in a coffee shop in Tennessee were all poster boys for the NRA, I would, and was, as it turned out, be wrong. They were all enraged that a son-in-law of one let his toddler hold a gun. "Don't own one, never have," the bride's father barked.
Some states were red by reputation and ballot count, but in the heart of one was a young man working the register at a gas station who saw our California license plate and wanted to talk about organic gardening. We did. He had just voted in his first election. Voted blue, if you will. We was wishing that there were only a popular vote so he could "see exactly to the number how I lost fair and square." He had a point.
Red or blue, we were called Ma'am or Sir by anybody with whom we interacted. Not just front desk people and waitresses, but people who wanted to pet Paddy and Joe, people just holding doors as they preceded us into a place, or thanked us for holding it for them. This was true from Texas on, and I liked it. It didn't seem deferential, just polite. A way of saying that even if I don't know you, I will suspend judgement about who I think you are based on your license plate or the fact that you, Ma'am me are wearing all black and big dark glasses and lipstick at seven in the morning.
We need this civility. We need gestures of understanding and...ya know what? WE NEED PEOPLE NOT TO COME TO BROADWAY SHOWS WEARING SHORTS AND FLIP-FLOPS. We are working hard up here, folks. Find a pair of socks.
Anyway, my favorite line in The Philadelphia Story is this: "The time to make up your mind about people is never."
My dog Joe has, we have discovered, an opposable thumb...took off his collar last night. We think it's cause he's sure he's being dragged across America in the witness relocation program...
Paddy, our old girl, will eat anything, much like me, so her new tag for NYC will have her returned to Zabar's if lost...
We're off on the last leg in about 20 minutes. I am so excited. One more note as we hit the Holland Tunnel.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________ TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
I love grits. Grits with gravy, biscuits, some chopped up mystery meat... Grits with maple syrup... Chris went into the restaurant this morning to get us some breakfast and ordered me an egg white omelette and grits. I walked the dogs and literally hopped at the thought of my grits. He appeared with the styrofoam container and I opened the lid. Hash browns, no grits. I ate them.
I am able, like my hero the hummingbird, to consume forty-seven times my own weight every day and I'm on my way. I have fallen so off my eight-shows-a-week regime that I'll be lucky to get a tour of Hairspray soon. I have a bag of Cheetos in the back, unopened, like smokers who keep a cigarette in a plexiglass case. I've just opened the bag a tiny bit for it to breathe.
There are, by my hasty count in a moving car, sixty-four places to eat just off the interstate between Little Rock and Memphis. What if you were only going from Little Rock to Memphis? Do you need all those choices?
By the way, driving into Memphis at dusk was an awesome experience. The Mississippi River was sparkling, the Mud Island pyramid loomed huge and was falling into shadow. The miraculous St. Jude's Hospital was right there welcoming pilgrims whose causes were no longer lost.
We have traveled eighteen hundred miles as I write this, mostly cleanly slicing through a state and glimpsing only its cities' outskirts; near railways, by airports. This is not how to "see the U.S.A.," but it has made me wonder.
What holds a country together?
I cannot hold forth on so unwieldy a topic, but I offer a small, digestible, if you'll forgive me, observation.
Food. We agree about food. I have never heard a candidate promise more food. They promise health care and tax relief and better schools, but they never mention food to the electorate because they know the voters by and large can eat. If we weren't allowed to eat for two weeks before the election, I wonder who would win. The undernourished among us don't vote, so they are not courted, which made me think. What happened to the "chicken in every pot?"
What holds a relationship together? Gum.
I am a fairly offensive backseat driver. I'm not technically a control freak, the technicality being that I precede my barking order by shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Well, do what you like, but..." So, today, I was pretty irritating to Chris, who is grace and even-temperedness itself. He blew, in no small, graceful or even-tempered way.
In silence we stopped at a Cracker Barrel Yes! We found another one! I went to order food as he walked the dogs and at the cashier's desk there was a pile of Dentyne. I smiled. Right next to it was a pile of Beeman's gum. Bigger smile. Beeman's was my obsession when I was a teenager. I would buy it after school while walking home, hide it so my brother couldn't find it, chew it surreptitiously in class This took the skill of a Tai Chi master and a poker face. When Chris was a boy, he would pray to a small, etched tin icon of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus. He prayed for Dentyne, and while he knelt there, his mother, hiding behind the door, would take a piece and throw it at him, usually hitting him on the forehead. He thought it was a miracle, but it was an act of love.
I fantasized about buying him the Dentyne. Then, while looking for him as he walked the dogs, I fantasized about having him come looking for me, see the Beeman's and buy some for me. A sort of first-draft-Gift-of-the-Magi fantasy. But he didn't need a miracle from me; he needed an act of love. I walked to the van to apologize. The door was open and Chris was leaning against it. There was music playing. It was our favorite CD from when we first fell in love.
Better than gum.
Tip: What holds southern cornbread together? Never eat it without a note from your cardiologist. If the Macabbees had gotten hold of this batch, they could have burned their oil lamps another eight days.
Happy Hanukkah.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________ MONDAY, DECEMBER 6
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA
Well, yesterday we were borne aloft by the adrenaline of the whole thing--the drive, the move, the adventures and the chance to return to the city where we used to live. We hit Albuquerque last night--twelve hours on the road, one new time zone. We were psyched. In this state of grace, I chose a motel out of a book that tells you where dogs are welcome, and I should have guessed from the price that their main clientele must have been dogs with the occasional human. No names, but the soap was half used and the mattress had the dented shape of a German Shepherd. And someone chewed the drapes.
Today we departed in a small blizzard, me at the wheel. I don't know if I was trying to tie yesterday's record but as I was zipping through a white-out, Chris said, "You know, Cantinflas, it's okay if we come in second..." We stopped a few times, particularly in Texas, where we traversed the panhandle.
Texas is large. You know all of this, but it is so striking. Really, really large like an entire country and the few people we chatted with at various restaurants, particularly in Amarillo, were as expansive. They live under the biggest sky I have ever seen. We decided to order lunch and eat it in the car so the dogs wouldn't freak there are abandonment issues with Joe... Oh, never mind and the sky opened up with a thunderstorm that shook the van. There were glyphs and pitchforks of lightning and barrels of water falling on us. As we gingerly pulled back onto the Interstate, the horizon was a pinpoint of azure at the end of a corridor of black. Very thrilling. There was so little of a vertical nature that at any point that we could see twenty miles in every direction, broken only once by a rainbow, then another one. I kept looking behind me as Chris drove because I have this recurring dream that I am driving and the road is closing up behind me, but that's another story for another day.
Between the two of us. Equidistant, not having to choose.
Today I drove through Texas recalling his tiny face and so many chunks of time spent away from him, packing or unpacking his small red tweed suitcase. Chris had put some Beethoven on the CD player, then some Ryan Adams and I was crying for a while. My son is a man now, has been for a while and I had the joy of never leaving him for any length of time these last fourteen years. He's coming into the fat part of his work and dreams. His talent is undeniable and now championed. He is the one who packed my big tweed suitcase and told me to get back to the theater. In my family, we all raise each other.
I opened the "we love dogs" motel guide and decided that Oklahoma City was as much as we needed to do today. I picked a place that shall remain nameless other than to say it rhymes with Aunt Harriet and as I write this, I am sitting in front of a real fire, having eaten a real meal we cooked in a beautiful room, immaculately clean, Chris is watching Monday Night Football with the dogs on his lap.
I am between my homes. Roads open everywhere I look.
Tip: Don't try to give yourself a manicure on the road. Wait 'til you're the passenger.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________ SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
800 miles. Seemed like 750. Easy. You have to give California high marks for winter. The Sierra Nevada Mountains, gorgeous with snow. We were deciding the route up until yesterday. The usual choices--the southern route or the new/old Route 66 now I-40 all the way to the I-95--got momentarily upstaged by the fact that you can take a diagonal route right to New York and never miss a fresh vegetable thanks to Cracker Barrel Restaurants and their cross-country saturation. But then we figured, what good are fresh vegetables when we would hit every blizzard through the Rockies and wind up meeting the Donner party for dinner? And then there are the dogs.
I won't admit this to many people but we are only posing as sane folk with two dogs. We are, in fact, a bit stupid when it comes to Joe and Paddy. One Halloween, we dresssed up Joe as Satan and Paddy as a bride, complete with bouquet. Oh, and we speak for them. Not with dopey voices--that's annoying--but as we know they would sound. Paddy actually does speak, and it's a ringer for the late Barry White. Joe is more high strung, like Don Knotts. Okay, we do use dopey voices.
They saw their first snow today. Flagstaff, Arizona, late afternoon. A fabulous grey sky and big chunky flakes. Paddy went berzerk and ate them. Joe was constantly ruffing his fur to shake them off. It would have been fun to 'speak' for them at that moment, but Chris and I were just cooling off from the "Why stop for gas when it's still got a quarter of a tank"/"Yes, but now the light has gone on and we're 26 miles from a town I've never heard of..." fight. We slid in to the gas station on vapor. I won't say who was the cavalier gas approximater and who was the borderline hysterical person. Personetta.
The Coconino National Forest was picture perfect over-the-river-and-through-the-woods. We popped some CDs in and just flew across Arizona. By the way, both Arizona and New Mexico have rivers called Rio Puerco--Pork River? Pig River? Who's the river-namer anyway?
Tip: Don't do a ballet barre to stretch out at a truck stop. It's pretentious and suspicious.
xxx joanna
_____________________________________________________
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Dear Broadway.com Ether Bunnies:
Joanna Gleason and the powers that be at Broadway.com have decided it's an intriguing idea for her to chronicle her trip east, as she moves back to New York City for the new musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. For some reason involving a pet psychic she met and an expensive veterinarian, Gleason's driving across the country with her husband Chris Sarandon, two dogs, her laptop and a rented minivan--not to mention Cheetos and a thermos full of something non-caffeinated, which seems useless in the face of driving 12 hours a day. They leave Sunday, the fifth of December and hope to pull into New York before the spring thaw. Or seven days later, whichever comes first.
I don't know why this letter is in the third person as it's me who's writing it. So, I'll send the first installment Sunday night after Chris and Paddy and Joe and I hit our first motel! Wagons ho!
xxx joanna
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About the author:
Joanna Gleason made her Broadway debut in 1977 in the Cy Coleman/Michael Stewart musical I Love My Wife at the Barrymore Theatre, winning a Theatre World Award for her performance. Gleason earned a Tony Award nomination for 1985's Joe Egg and took home the Best Actress in a Musical Tony for her work as the Baker's Wife in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods in 1988. Other Broadway credits include The Real Thing, Social Security and Nick & Nora, the musical adapation of The Thin Man films. Although Nick & Nora may not have lasted long on Broadway, the show introduced Gleason to co-star Chris Sarandon, her husband since 1994. In recent years, this versatile performer has showed the many sides of her talents by directing off-Broadway's A Letter to Ethel Kennedy and starring in last season's revival of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. But after making a healthy living on screens both big Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Mr. Holland's Opus, Boogie Nights, The Wedding Planner and small TV's Oh Baby, Bette, ER, King of the Hill, Friends, The Practice, The West Wing, Gleason is heading back to Broadway in the smashing new musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In this online diary, the very funny leading lady is heading across the country and taking Broadway.com readers along for the ride.