Roundup: “06880” Comments, La Plage …

Good news!

Our “please be civil” Comments policy has been followed decently (though not perfectly) so far.

Moving forward, the maximum number of comments allowed for each reader on a thread will be raised from 3 to 5.

Thanks for commenting. And, as always: Please use your full, real name. Deleting anonymous comments is really, really annoying.

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Starting last night, and running every Sunday this winter, La Plage offers a Locals Night Menu.

The prix fixe offering includes a family-style chef’s selection appetizer, entrée (a pinsa. Scottish salmon, fish and chips, homemade squid ink fettuccine, fried chicken or burger) and drink for $39.

The Sunday night kids’ menu has also been upgraded. For details, click here. 

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Westport resident David Meth’s play, “To the Death of My Own Family,” has won another grant from Artists Respond from the Connecticut Office of the Arts for Equity and Racial Justice.

Meth calls it “an intensely dramatic nonlinear play about an Afghan-American woman who returns to Afghanistan to help her father escape, only to witness the carnage of her entire family. Upon her return to the US she is detained, interrogated, and forced to justify her journey in order to reclaim her citizenship.

“We then learn about a deeper, darker secret that has shadowed the family for many years, but which they do not want to confront until they are forced to confront each other in the face of death.

With the grant, Meth will seek an opportunity to create a playwriting workshop for high school and college students. Click here for more information.

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These icicles are a “Westport … Naturally” reminder of the fragile beauty that surrounds us, in even the most ordinary places.

(Photo/Judith Marks-White)

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And finally …

Mary Weiss, the leader of the “Leader of the Pack” bad-girl group The Shangri-Las, died last week. She was 75.

Her Los Angeles Times obituary says: “They were poor white teens from New York City, occasionally singing with pronounced Queens accents and always performing with a stylish swagger….

“Though their time in the spotlight lasted a little under two years, the Shangri-Las created an enduring rock ‘n’ roll archetype: Girls who were every bit as strong and sexy as their doomed boyfriends, boys who were ‘good bad’ but ‘not evil,’ as Weiss said on ‘Give Him a Great Big Kiss.’

“This attitude and the group’s heightened music — equal parts operatic pop and exuberant R&B — proved influential, particularly on the punks of New York City in the 1970s.

“Blondie covered their ‘Out in the Streets’; the New York Dolls swiped the spoken intro from ‘Give Him a Great Big Kiss’ for their ‘Looking for a Kiss,’ then hired Morton as the producer for their second album, setting the stage for Aerosmith covering ‘Remember (Walking in the Sand) during the height of punk.”

In 2019, “Leader of the Pack” was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

LOCAL ANGLE: In the mid-’60s, the Shangri-Las performed downstairs at the Terpsichore — the Ice Cream Parlor’s (very) short-lived discotheque. I was about 13 years old, but somehow I managed to see them there.

(Click here for the full obituary. Hat tip: Michael Taylor)

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