Bruce Apar’s Blog

Li’l Abner, which played for three performances last weekend at Yorktown High School, is an old-fashioned musical comedy that lit up The Great White Way for two years a half-century ago (in the good ol’ days when people knew how to contract the word little, because apostrophes replace letters in the middle).

Even students having a lot of fun on stage performing a fast-moving, tuneful show like this one are getting an education, and so is an audience unfamiliar with forgotten gems that are rarely revived anywhere, while we overdose on yet another mediocre rendering of Annie ad nauseam.

Music teacher Tom Arduini, who directed the production to a fine turn — complete with crisply choreographed production numbers and well-projected vocal ensembles — made that point at the curtain of the final performance Sunday afternoon. No, he didn’t mention Annie, but he did offer an incisive observation to the audience in the seats and the students on stage that this is “educational theater, not recreational theater.” That is to say, instead of just performing a show like “Annie” almost by rote for the umpteenth time, as entertaining as it may be, students interested in theater craft stand to learn more by inhabiting shows that plumb deeper into Broadway’s rich history.

Some questioned Mr. Arduini’s choice of musical this year, to say the least, yet he proved crazy like a fox in his choice. Having seen my share of school musicals the past 15 years, this staging of Li’l Abner ranks right up there as one of the very best in memory.

As brought to life by an effervescent cast of talented teens, it was funny, fast-moving, highly tuneful and eminently entertaining. The score was penned by composer Gene DePaul and legendary lyricist Johnny Mercer, a hit machine who turned out many standards of the mid-20th Century.

There was not one, but many, standout performances, yet I hesitate to single out names here because this was a team effort all the way, no less so than a varsity football or basketball or lacrosse team pulling together in the same direction to triumph as a singular unit. And the protean effort actors and stage crews and production teams invest in painstaking rehearsals is no less demanding than the draining two-a-days of pre-season football training.

At the end of Sunday’s show, Yorktown’s own theater impresario, Barry Liebman, managing director of Yorktown Stage, said to me, “Every seat in that auditorium should have been filled.” His point, and mine, is that this was a show well worth seeing. At 10 bucks a pop, there’s no better value around. Somewhat sadly, it’s human nature to respond mostly to marquee names, whether a pop singer or a Broadway show title.

Chatting afterwards in the school parking lot, senior Joe Perkowski, a cast member, who also is on the varsity baseball squad, said how much he enjoyed performing on stage and how much he had learned from Mr. Arduini, including things about himself he may never have discovered had he not stretched and pushed and expressed himself beyond the classroom and ballfield.

It reminded me of another student in whose memory our Foundation proudly supports the performing arts in the schools. “There are no small roles, only small actors,” said one teen performer named Harrison Apar. “That would be me.”

Ah, yes, but when he was on stage, making people laugh by hamming it up, he felt ten- feet tall.

Self-esteem is a beautiful thing, especially in a person who is three-feet tall.

Northern Westchester Hospital Grand Prix racer Bruce Apar, whom nobody’s mistaking for a NASCAR dad, let alone a NASCAR driver.

Never again will I entertain the notion that NASCAR drivers are something other than athletes. After a few laps around the track at Grand Prix New York in Mount Kisco — in full racing regalia (pictured above) that had me and about 30 other other thrill-seekers head socked, helmeted and jumpsuited head to toe — I was, as they say in Yiddish, shvitzing. My hair may as well have been under a shower head.

The next day, I sensed slight, dull aches in my right arm and back. But, man, was it ever worth it. The go-karts, built in France and considered the best of breed, according to Grand Prix partner and marketing VP Nat Mundy, can get up to 30 mph, but my top speed, according to the personalized stat sheet we were handed every each of three heats, was about 23 mph.

While negotiating the turns, including two consecutive hairpins, and literally looking over my shoulder to see who was on my tail, I was locked in, gripping the steering wheel with a competitive zeal that surprised me.

This event, on the morning of Saturday, March 8, was part of the Grand Prix Ball fundraiser for Northern Westchester Hospital. While the major-league players each had to pony up $1000 each, going to a great cause of course — the daVinci Robotic Surgery Program — hospital marketing VP Carin Grossman kindly invited me to experience the racing competition. Such are the perks of the working press — or the playing press, in cases like this.

However, there was the proviso that should I qualify for the semi-finals, which took place as part of the evening’s cocktail reception, I could not compete, and for a very good reason. The paying customers may not appreciate being edged out of a semi-final slot by a freeloader. Nobody needn’t have worried a second about that possibility.

In my three heats, each an endurance test of five to six minutes and 10 or so laps, I struck laughter in the hearts of the other competitors by placing 7 of 10, 9 of 11, and 10 of 11. How’s that for progress? So take that, Stirling Moss ! (am I showing my age?).

The smarter drivers — a group that emphatically did not include me — learned well the lesson served up in the orientation session by Grand Prix racing director Ari Gatoff: you are not racing against the other drivers, or even racing for the fastest heat time. Every driver’s fastest lap in each heat is used to determine your ranking.

So why, then, was I trying so insistently in the first heat to pass other drivers in my futile attempt to stay at the front of the pack? Good question.

Another faux pas I made was thinking that cutting corners was a smart strategy. Wrong again. It feels good doing it, as your rear wheels skid around the turns and do a neat little slide step sideways. The truth, though, is that such moves are too clever by half because they cut precious fractional seconds off your lap time.

By the third heat, I kinda sorta figured that out, and started to take wider turns, but the ideal turning strategy is somewhere in between the two extremes I experimented with.

To be continued …

Elyse Apar with Queen of Katonah Martha Stewart
Photo by Mr. Elyse “Bruce” Apar

The good people at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco sure know how to put on a high-octane fundraiser. As guests of the hospital for its March 8 Grand Prix Ball, named for its host venue, Grand Prix New York, a very cool kart-racing complex off Route 117, my wife Elyse and I chatted with former George Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, honorary chair of the event, and had a (very) brief encounter with the cool Queen of Katonah, Martha Stewart. Also among the crowd of 800 were Congressman John Hall and District Director Susan Spear, State Senator Vincent Leibell and wife Helen, and Yorktown Supervisor Don Peters and wife Karen.

After I told Mr. Fleischer how I enjoyed hearing his views as an articulate political commentator on channels like CNN and Fox News, his friendly advice to this an unabashed cable news junkie was, “You’re better off watching ESPN.” He and wife Becki also were quite the ballroom dancers.

The redoubtable Ms. Stewart made a million-dollar matching donation to the hospital for its state-of-the-art daVinci Robotic Surgical system, the beneficiary of the evening’s million-dollar fundraiser. The remarkable technology, used primarily for certain urology and gynecologic surgeries, is more accurate, less invasive, and reduces hospital stays and recovery time for patients.

We also had what amounted to an impromptu demonstration of her vaunted reputation as a natural organizer. When I asked about the possibility of a photo, she graciously assented to pose alongside my better half.

Foolishly thinking I could hand off my camera to work my way into the frame with the two ladies, I quickly realized Ms. Stewart had a different composition in mind as she pointed and told me to “stand over there” (a few feet from the table) to get the right angle. A bit deflated by being cropped out of the picture before it even got to the PhotoShop stage, I nevertheless played the dutiful husband, disguised as a fawning photographer, or vice versa.

There’s a lot of talk around Yorktown about what senior citizens want in the way of a new gathering place. The more outspoken among them hanker for a brand spanking new setting altogether, away from the calcified environs of the Yorktown Community & Cultural Center(YCCC), which happens to lie at the historical heart of the burgh. And who would blame them? If somebody offered to either renovate your current home or build a spiffy new one, which would you choose — especially if you weren’t paying for either choice.

YCCC itself epitomizes (or, considering its age and state, entombs) the town’s history. It was the town’s second school building (the first was situated up the road some on Hanover Street, in the general footprint where the original St. Patrick’s stone church now stands). It also happens to house what passes for the current so-called seniors center. It is, without doubt, a makeshift solution. But what is the plausible alternative right now? I sure don’t know. Does anybody?

The word plausible is fraught with all kinds of interpretations. At bottom, the most practical definition, or synonym, is “affordable.” Who among us would happily volunteer to pay our share for a senior center costing a cool several million bucks, which is the estimated sum bandied about.

On the other hand, how many hands would go up among Yorktown families if the question asked instead were who among us would happily volunteer to pay our share for a multipurpose, year-round sports & recreation center costing a cool several million bucks?

TO BE CONTINUED …