A healthy eight hours!

From 5:00 am to 1:00 pm!

It's been a while since I've done that. Ah, youth! Too bad tomorrow it'll all be gone, gone, gone!

Work was very silly yesterday. I met up with Craig at around 8:30 in Times Square, which was a terrible idea but also a good idea, and we just wandered around and chatted. I was so happy to see him. He walked me over to the theatre where I saw....

'Things We Want.' It wasn't great by a long shot but it was good enough that I enjoyed myself and didn't fall asleep...which felt like a very real possibility as soon as I sat down. Paul Dano was really pretty good- he had the most to do, sort of. I don't know-- the play itself wasn't good. Josh Hamilton had to play two diamaetrically opposing parts of the same annoying, completely unbelievable character, and he did so in a way that, uh....made my flesh crawl? I couldn't stand him. I guess it served him as the play wore on, but at that point I was so done watching him that I didn't really care. Peter Dinklage had a fun part and got to do a lot of stumbling around and running into things, which people in the audience kept responding to with "Awwwww!," in a "How CUTE!" way. Iiiiiiiiiiiii don't know about that. And Zoe Kazan....her part sucked so much. It had so much promise in the first act and then all of a sudden fifteen minutes later she's walking around with no pants on and pretending to give Josh Hamilton a blowjob. Whatever.

For me, the frustrating thing is....of course I love to go to the theatre, even if it's bad, usually even if I KNOW it's going to bad. I'd usually rather see even bad theatre than do a lot of other things. And I really believe that and feel that, because I think everything has merit, even if it's just to show me what I have to spend the rest of my days combatting. To be dramatic about it. So I see things like this play-- certainly I'd rather watch that than Cats or those readings I saw the other night-- and I dont' expect everything, or really anything, to be perfect, but-- this play had what I thought were some serious, serious issues. Did everyone responsible for getting this production disagree with me? Because the thought that goes through my mind is-- Well, if they liked this piece of crap, then they'll fucking LOVE *my* play!

Which of course has absolutely no basis in logical fact. But you know? I know in my brain that it's all based on a myruiad of factors which have absolutely no part in my life. But in my not-brain, in my...heart? (what?), I don't know, I just think "What I have to say is so much BETTER than this!"

And maybe that's at the core of everyone who is stupid/ballsy/cocky/generous enough to enter into any sort of artistic pursuit. Who the hell knows. It's 2:00 and I just woke up.

After the show, I made the epic trek to Katy's house in Queens. I don't even know where in Queens I was. All I know was that the directions involved things like 'Okay, now you see those train tracks? Walk over them.' I wrote her address down incorrectly and wound up a few blocks from her house, amidst these dark, creepy, overgrown houses with freaky statuary and/or junk in the yard. I forced myself to have a second wind, and the night wound up being very nice-- the Boston caravan arrived around 2, and Pat and Ollie were there when Craig and Nitz arrived. We did Hannukah, and Pat and I each got a birthday cupcake. Everyone was so beyond exhausted that the punchiness level was sky-high, and almost everything made me laugh literally until I was crying. (THAT's what's on the other side of tiredness, Elaine!) Billy drove us home pretty smoothly. I went to bed at 5!

Today, I'm dedicating most of my day to watching Arrested Development with Meg. Because I can-can-can.

Yes!

So recently I've become addicted to using Google Reader and have been reading a lot of blogs lately. Today's hit is from the good old Guardian. It is of particular interest to me and to this blog...if this blog had thoughts and feelings. Here's part of it:

"In this country we are terrified of appearing pretentious. Somehow it has become theatre's cardinal sin. Be boorish, loutish, crude, superficial, snobbish, elitist or just plain boring, but please, whatever you do, don't be pretentious.

Fuelled by this paranoia, the meaning of the term has been allowed to mutate and expand, its tentacles stretching outwards, moving beyond claims of "exaggerated importance" to encompass anything that might be intellectually or philosophically dense and challenging, or even just not immediately accessible. A quick scan of the responses to Katie Mitchell's Attempts On Her Life finds the production described variously as "pretentious in the extreme", "pretentious rubbish" or, more imaginatively, "pretentious arthouse crap" - a phrase that moves beyond a single production to castigate an entire genre of work. This gets to the heart of the matter, suggesting a lingering distrust (or, indeed, contempt) for the idea that theatre should assume it can be anything other than undiluted entertainment."

That's sort of encouraging, isn't it? At least to pretentious arthouse types like me.

I'm working reception at a law firm in midtown today. I think I drank curdled milk this morning. Then I washed it down with grapefruit juice. This could mean disaster. We'll see.

I saw a show at the Sonnet Rep last night-- a comedy called "Proximity," written by Jerzy Gw------- (I can't attempt to spell his last name), who I met through the MUDasMAN folks and who I saw as Davey in Lt. of Inishmore on B-way. Jerzy wrote one of the four MUDasMAN pieces that I just worked on. He's a nice guy. Isaac Klein and I met up for the show, so it was good to see him. We were supposed to go out for a drink after, but I bailed, and I fear Isaac will never forgive me. I liked the play. It had a ton of great ideas in it, and it was goofy and fun and the acting was good. I like going to small shows, and I like being able to support people my own age who are doing what I hope very soon to be doing.

And tonight-- a big party! I'm seeing "Things We Want" at the Acorn (Peter Dinklage!!), and then heading to somewhere in Queens for a party celebrating my birthday, Pat's birthday, Hannukah, and the fact that Emily and Meghan are coming in from Boston! I have the sick feeling I'll be up very late tonight, but I think it'll be worth it.

All for now.