rhymes with bitch

Sometime back, when Elaine Stritch appeared in an interview session at Steppenwolf's Traffic Series, a fawning fan in the audience stood up to remind her that they had met, that he was a big fan, that he had interviewed her in Detroit, yadda yadda yadda -- taking forever to get to his question -- and of course the thing that made it so funny was he kept getting her name wrong. She corrected him several times (which he failed to hear through his yammering) and then finally said: "It's STRITCH -- rhymes with BITCH."

Brought the house down.

Now I adore Ms Stritch (rhymes with bitch), so I feel a little uncharitable posting this video clip, shot the other week when litwit and I hit her dry run for the Carlyle -- but it's precious and it's true and it's just that she was tired after putting on long show, and her insulin dose was ebbing low.

And seeing her cranky as all get out just makes me love her more.

(Warning: It's dark and hard to see -- and there's another fawning fan in the wings -- and yeah, I was goof enough to think I could turn my camera sideways to shoot video and everything would come out all right in the end. It won't happen again.)