Obviously, I don’t get out enough. My consort treated me to “Long Story Short” on Broadway, and I was first stunned to see not just a whole new hotel at the top of the subway stairs at 44th Street but a whole new, and huge, Shake Shack. And then, as we rushed to our seats, bypassing the bar, we were both amazed to see a woman working the aisles, as if we were in a baseball stadium, hawking wine and candy and Jell-O shots. This is what the theater is like these days?

As for the performance, it was well worth seeing, a smart connect-the-dots on empires and hubris through history, but I wish I had not read Monsieur Ami’s stilettoesque take on the director in the New Yorker on the C train to Midtown. I liked one line in the monologue about America being “a bouillabaisse of failed states” until I learned the annoying comedian was responsible for it, and of course I then started thinking what a dumb metaphor that is. Bouillabaisse is not a melting-pot concept; what goes into it is pretty rigidly codified. Figures Mr. Jessica would slip something deceptive into a real thought piece. Eat your spinach. It’s someone else’s brownie.