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greatest in all of music and can withstand all sorts of abuse, including being played on two pianos. Lehár's musical confec- tionary needs sighing strings, ethereal flutes and rousing brass to have any effect. To put it more cynically: Te weaker the piece, the more help it needs. It has been some nine months since the orchestra played a concert, and most of the best and younger players have left town for other jobs. It is time to move on. Merry Widow, though, is a great enter- tainment, very funny and deeply touch- ing, and it re-creates a poignant nostal- gia for a supposedly elegant lifestyle that WWI blew away. It tells of a rich Eastern European widow, residing in Paris, whose countrymen conspire to find her a native husband to keep her money in her home country. Te embassy's elegant loafer, Count Danilo, is the reluctant suitor. Punning praise After a century of both abuse and neglect, it is time for the pun to make a comeback. Long regarded as the lowest form of wit, it will be my goal to restore it to eminence among gags. Te ancients punned. Shake- speare was a master. Even Jesus punned, though stand-up comedy was not his forte: "Tat thou art Peter, and upon this rock…." (Peter means "rock" in Latin.) So here is a pun to ignite the revival, coined, I am proud to say, by my younger son, David: Did you know that Steve Jobs' great-grandfather was a pirate? He invent- ed the iPatch. Final thought In all the chatter about the top 1 percent having all the money and the remaining 99 percent of us scraping along, it oc- curs to me that the same disparity dogs the entertainment and arts scenes. I'll bet that the group that attends the opera or the MET's HD relays, the group that subscribes to the Chamber Music Soci- ety or has a relationship with the Speed, the group that shops at Carmichael's or collects concert-music CDs makes up, at most, 1 percent of the public. Te movies that win Oscars are almost invariably Bax- ter Avenue short-run stuff because they're not about two louts belching and farting their way through a drunken weekend. Polarization in political life, in the sharing of financial resources, and in entertain- ment — that is the new norm. Columnist Tomson Smillie's book How to Listen, Learn, Love Opera (thomsons- millie.com or at Carmichael's) was recently released. www.epicaward.org www.whywaittheapp.com 2.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [25]