Better Nate Than Ever: Explanation Time - Moving Ahead

But Heidi’s eyes are more concerned. Judgmental. “Nathan, what were you thinking?”

“And that all Libby wanted was to audition for the part of Elliott’s younger sister. And that her good friend Nathan was so sweet, such a sweetheart, that he offered to go all the way to New York City to drop off her headshot and resume in a manila envelope, and to bring a CD of the two of you doing some duet.”

We recorded it in the soprano key, even though it’s usually for a (normal) guy’s and girl’s voices.

Libby’s is a husky, throaty torch voice, and I can’t imagine the songwriting team has given Elliott’s younger sister a song on a piano with a bottle of scotch.

Legs Diamond! in fact. (1988, ran for sixty-four performances, which sounds like forever to me but is considered a flop, here. Starred an Australian with a legendary lisp. Flop. Big-ol’ flop.)

Legs Diamond! in fact. (1988, ran for sixty-four performances, which sounds like forever to me but is considered a flop, here. Starred an Australian with a legendary lisp. Flop. Big-ol’ flop.)

Here’s my chance to escape into the rabbit warren of hallways, back to the lineup of kids, to secure my place as number ninety-one, now publicly endorsed by an adult (even if she’s in the bathroom crying).

And that’s how she’s looking at me. Like I’m that dress, stained and irretrievable.

We’re dashing, cutting through pedestrians and into the street, not only not obeying basic traffic laws but also basic human decency protocol; twice, I watch Aunt Heidi flip off cab drivers who almost take her out.

She’s distraught already, it's clear, over the canker-sore commercial flashback.

She’s distraught already, it's clear, over the canker-sore commercial flashback.

And here I am, staring into a dressing-room mirror, my hat off and the brim—much tighter than I’d realized—having branded a red rim across my forehead, giving me the overall look of a post-lobotomy grade-schooler who, as a final wish before the infection sets in, gets to visit the World's Biggest Old Navy, just once.

I see a woman purchase a street pretzel and my belly groans, on cue, issuing its vote.

“Because—just—the only reason to even be here,” she says, “the only reason to deal with all the hassle—come on, man, can you get us there any slower?—is to also exploit the good stuff. And the good stuff is the local restaurants and the culture and junk.”

“Do you have any hidden talents?” Heidi asks.
“Nah,” I say. “Not really. I mean, I can hold my breath for three minutes underwater.” It’s my one expertise that even orbits the world of sports; Anthony tried to drown me once.

The room is horrible—let me say that now.
Sure, exciting. Blah blah blah, the mystique and intrigue of an interview.

The room is horrible—let me say that now.
Sure, exciting. Blah blah blah, the mystique and intrigue of an interview.

Maybe my special skill is “being in lines first,” because the ruckus that ensues, the forty-nine other children trying to find the number of the kid next to him or her?

We kids aren’t sure if we’re allowed to laugh, but the bearded assistant boys howl (really scream) at Sammy’s “ta-da,” and the screaming of the bearded boys makes us kids titter.

“The team” just stands there beaming like they’ve all won the Nobel Peace Prize for Musical Theater.

We stand there, dumbfounded, but Rex Rollins claps at us and we switch back on.

Garret Charles actually gave us a generic monologue about the dust of California in the eighties.

“How old are you?" Garret Charles says, his eyes beady.

Garret Charles crouches low against the mirror, with Monica, and flips through the pages on her clipboard fervently.

If I tried to impersonate a British person, like that, Libby would tell me I’m working too hard and ruining the scene.

And just as soon as she’s done, somehow backhand-springing directly into line, her feet in a perfect “parallel first” position, Garret Charles makes a small notation next to her name on the clipboard.

In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, a rambunctious Jewish father has to marry off his daughters, and during one of the ceremonies, the town villagers place a series of real live glass bottles atop their heads, pushed into the divots of their felt hats.

“Please take your belongings into the hallway, and wait with your parents for just a moment. We’ll confer and then come out to announce the next step. But you all did a sensational job!”

“Please take your belongings into the hallway, and wait with your parents for just a moment. We’ll confer and then come out to announce the next step. But you all did a sensational job!”

That another arts program was axed, deemed “frivolous” by the school board.

But I can barely make out her words on account of the jubilation around me, children jumping up and down, into and out of their adoring parents’ arms.

“No chance. First of all, you’re twenty minutes from the bus taking off’—I think Aunt Heidi’s saying these words, but she’s five feet ahead of me again, jumping over tourists and around strollers, and these are only the approximate consonants and vowels I’m making out above the rain and wind—“and second of all, Applebee’s is inedible.”

Walking the reverse path to Port Authority, everything that seemed exciting on the way into town now seems frenetic, dangerous, wound up too tight.

Maybe because, I dunno, to stop moving so fast might make you realize what an impractical home New York actually is.

And just a second later, when she pulls away, her eyes are fully wet, like two of the three rivers that converge at one point in downtown Pittsburgh.

That Aunt Heidi is heading south (downtown) to Aw Shucks, feeling good about herself, that she finally did something resembling conscientious when it came to her nephew or to any child at all.

I’m out of dough, besides, and need to replenish my supply.

One review described a scene in which “a mummified paraplegic rises from his wheelchair to kick a man dressed as a moose in the crotch,” according to Wikipedia.

I’m back on the sixteenth floor, the halls now littered not only with us kids auditioning for E.T. but a group of women in body stockings and provocative hairstyles (side ponytails, lots of ’em).

Beckany, the ringlet-haired casting assistant whose voice has steadily shredded into a total rasp today, is standing by the door, letting the last child out from her singing audition.

Suddenly “Bigger Isn’t Better”—an adorable song, sung by the midget in a show about circus folk—goes from being a sweet ditty about the merits of being a tiny person to being a warp-speed tongue twister.

Mr. Charles leaps up, quickly, in that surprising way an old dancer guy can slink (probably because of his years at the Harry Potter Ballet School or whatever) and changes tactics immediately, his panther jump from the seat turning into the slow, calculated crawl of a turtle. A ticked-off turtle hiding a machete in his shell.

“You know, when I was the movement consultant at the RSC—” He pauses.

And Garret Charles pulls out another maneuver, this time marching around like some band leader, pumping his arms, pointing his feet so hard, one of the loafers comes loose and threatens to interrupt his entire interrogation.

“The point being,” Garret Charles says, “you aren’t to come into my temple and waste our time with a Hamlet soliloquy when you are, presumably, auditioning for the role of a twelve-year-old boy in 1982 California. Research is needed, research before submitting any skill to a panel.”