I dreamt last night that I was at Yale. The event calendar for incoming students listed "Randy Newman. Earthquake - 8 PM." I was impressed that they knew when the earthquake was going to be, but then someone told me it was the name of a club.

In production: The recent news that Christopher Walken will star in a musical version of James Joyce's "The Dead" made me thankful once again that Dubliners hasn't gotten the Andrew Lloyd Webber treatment.

Picture the second act curtain: Bernadette Peters in old(er)-age makeup bellowing "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls" to a lambada beat while the Titanic hoists gigantic sail for Buenos Ayres....

On the other hand, Joyce's much-expressed love of cornball music would give Randy Newman a shot at his best Disney score yet, albeit at the cost of turning all the characters into mice:

Conley ran his tongue swiftly along his twitching pink nose.

-- O, the real cheese, you know....