I went to it last night for the first time in a lonnnggg time. A friend who is a mighty poobah at the White House invited the Fair Jessica and me to sit in — get this — the Presidential box at the Kennedy Center. That was cool. The M&Ms and mini champagne bottle with the Presidential seals were cool. The play itself? Fair to middling.

It was called The Subject Was Roses. And while I know very little about the thee-ay-turr, I must say I thought the play was fairly derivative and clichéd. The acting was good to even very good. The big name star in it is Bill Pullman. No one thought my idea of shouting lines from Independence Day and Space Balls throughout the show would be funny, so I held off.

Regardless it could have used some of that kind of writing. The story is based around three characters, a man, his wife and their son who’s returned from WWII a man. They’re an Irish Catholic family in the West Bronx and almost all the themes seemed Arthur Millery or Eugene Oneilly, though slightly less depressing (I would rather eat glass than see Long Day’s Journey into Night again). Basically, it was an All Families Are Unhappy In Their Own Way story. And I felt like, like I’d seen it ten times before — and I haven’t been to play in at least ten years. When it seemed like the family was going to be torn apart, I thought Pullman could really have used his “this is our independence day speech.” But, all in all, a good time had by all.