Third eyes, trips, and TWO TINY DOGS JUST RAN BY

The other day at work, one of my favorite co-workers was talking about of friend of his from home, Japan, who sometimes 'can't go outside because his third eye is too open and it's too hard for him...he sees demons on the street and bad stuff everywhere and he can't handle it.' This was met with derision by my Israeli co-worker (who ardently believes in astrology, incidentally) but I was super into. What makes me think of this is mostly the fact that I, too, have a third eye. It is located below my left ear. I can't see out of it--YET--but it's getting there. I'll update you later.

I venture down South tomorrow! I finished packing this afternoon after much hemming and hawing and obsessing. Of course the part that took the longest was picking out the jewelry. Of course. I am taking the SuperShuttle (how super could it be? My mind turns to Arrested Development, and Tobias-- "Why would I take a limo, when for only twelve dollars I can get to the airport in this van?" to "Are you kidding, another stop?! I paid twelve American dollars for this ride!") from Union Square tomorrow and hopefully I'll get to the airport with plenty of time, etcetera. I printed out my ticket and, allegedly, my boarding pass for tomorrow, so hopefully the process will be somewhat expedited tomorrow. We'll see. From there it's a lot of schlepping, carpooling and then getting to camp at some point in the early evening, sitting down to the first camp dinner at 6:00, and then we're off. I can't believe I'm doing this. This whole thing is sort of insane. I was saying to someone today that I'm not sure when I got so nervous about traveling. I traveled so much by myself when I was abroad-- it wasn't easy as pie, but I managed just fine in Prague, Budapest, all around Scotland....planes, buses, trains. I was stressed then-- and maybe I was as stressed as I have been and just don't remember.

Anyway, one way or another, it's all going to work out and I think it's really going to be good. I was advised to avoid the following things in New Orleans-- some of them are going to be harder than others: vampires, floods (too soon?), inbreeding, teeth tattoos (that's tattoos ON my teeth-- I'm not sure about tattoos OF teeth)... we'll see what happens. And I'm so excited to see Jacob in his (new) element! And of course anticipating stuffing myself to the gills with really delicious food.

This trip. Hoo boy.

I am at work right now....for two and a half more hours. Doing. Nothing. Nothing. Going. On. So. Ridiculous.

Alright, I have to finish up intarweb stuff because I'll be without a computer for a week ("Just like the old days!" says friend...I feel like I'm going back in time in more ways than one. I literally am, I suppose!). I want to put a goofy vacation response up on my gmail but am afraid that Hollywood will come calling and be met with "I'm down South, wearing a frumpy outfit, avoiding conversion!" So we'll see.

Says my West Village-dwelling coworker:
"Gay Day and Halloween. They are the worst."

Goodbye until the 11th of July! Expect pictures and more than you'll want to read when I get back.

Maybe I Just Don't See The Reason.

But...


Well, I'm certifiably intoxicated. Let's see how many (if any) typographical errors I make. Tonight, I "worked" by seeing a show, then went out for Mexican and margaritas with Emma and Matt afterwards. Delicious and way, way too much. There was a brief downpour; service was bad; Kurt Vonnegut says that semicolons are "transvestite hermaphrodites that do nothing except prove you've been to college." Sue me, Kurt. I've been to college.


Craig met up with us and we eventually extricated ourselves from the morass that is Mary Ann's on Second Avenue. We then took a detour into Alphabet City, Emma got her ass groped, and we wound up back on Second Avenue at a nondescript "Irish" bar, playing darts. I am a very, very bad darts player. I had several beers, and now my fingertips are refusing to cooperate.


In the words of the Raconteurs-- should we call it a day? Yeah? Would that be okay?

Everybody's talking like they can't sit down, and looking like they can't stand up.

Sometimes, in the morning, I get up when real people get up (not 10.30), and go out, and do things that real people do, like walk around or drink coffee in a cafe. And it is lovely. Today, the nip in the air is nice, the sun is nice, the flowering trees are beyond nice, the dogs, the people, the company, the everything.

Last night I went to BAM to see Endgame by Samuel Beckett. So I've decided that I'm really, really not very into Beckett, at all at all at all. At least not right now. Honestly, I don't know what the play was "about," what I was theoretically supposed to be getting out of it, and I'm not that interested in trying to figure it out or dedicate much thought to it. I was mostly there to see the four actors (Elaine Stritch, Alvin Epstein, John Turturro, Max Casella) because I like each of them individually (ok, except maybe A.E.) and wanted to see them together. Weirdest cast ever.

ANYWAY, my point is that the evening would have been sort of unremarkable (or perhaps even remembered negativgely, since the fucking guy next to me couldn't stop sniffling (aka ruining my life) AND the bar of the balcony was running right through my field of vision) EXCEPT for the fact that something terrible and terrific happened. John Turturro, Hamm, spends the whole play in this big heavy wood chair that has wheels on the legs, and early-ish in the play he asks Clov, Max Casella, to wheel him around the room so he can feel the walls. Clov doesn't bring him close enough, so Hamm yells at him and Clov almost rams the chair into the wall, to get back at him. when this happened, the bag leg's wheel fell off. M.C. picked it up really calmly, and eventually tried to fix it while still delivering his lines. He seemed nervous and they adapted some business involving moving the chair, and I thought the result was actualy hilarious and probably better than what it was supposed to be. But what do I know. Anyway, this goes on for some time, MC fiddles with the wheel again, and it seems like everything is copacetic.

20 minutes later, Hamm has this massive speech where he's telling his dad an installment of this crazy story he's making up. His dad is in a garbage can, further downstage. J.T. flings his arms open and the chair, as if in slow motion, hurtles backward. The audience gasped louder than I've ever heard any gasp, JT smacked his head on the stage, and MC came running on. Staying mostly in the moment and in character, he assessed the situation and JT starts yelling "I don't need my chair to finish my story! I need to finish my story!" and starts wriggling out of the chair and crawling over to the garbage can. MC starts trying to get the chair righted and then this stagehand runs on and wheels the chair off. For the rest of the story, JT sat next to the can, and from the back of the stage, you could hear hammering and drilling and stuff. Which is hilarious, because Endgame is sort of supposed to exist in a VACUUM. Or something.

The conclusion of this hilarity was at the end of the story, someone coming over the God mic, saying "Ladies and gentlemen, we'll hold to bring the chair back on, it is fixed" and a stagehand whisking it on. They could have not said anything, and I wish they hadn't. I am also fully confident that they would have figured something out if they HADN'T taken the chair away and I kind of wish thay they hadn't.

It was wonderful. Later lines in the play had new, funny significance all of a sudden, and I don't even (or only) mean cheaply funny. It was wonderful to watch them adapt and scramble and compensate for the accident. And it made me think about all the stupid things that have gone wrong in shows I've been in.

Work has been silly lately-- two nights of drinking on the job raised morale a little bit. Had to watch one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life...but it was a fundraiser to, you know, stop GENOCIDE, so I look like a bastard if I complain about the shittiness of the thing. I don't care. It was super shitty. My friend Matt at work texted me from the sound board "I'm glad you're here to see this-- it's the real cultural atrocity."

Today, I will hopefully coerce Nitz to see the cherry blossoms with me, then we will hopefully go see Jhumpa Lahiri read at the Strand, then I will come home and hopefully binge to excess on Twin Peaks. These are my hopes.

Is she having a laugh?!

Who knew doing nothing could be so tiring?

I worked from 2.30-midnight yesterday. I managed to do 1/10th of the stuff I wanted to, which is an improvement from this past week. Pathetic.

It took me about 45 minutes to get home-- the L train is going to be screwed up after midnight for, oh, about two months. Which is wonderful.

Came home, hunkered down to do some work, did a fair amount (this is a totally relative measurement), "rewarded" myself by watching a little bit of Extras....fell asleep and then woke with a start at 5 in the morning, groaning. I'm forever doing things like that. For some reason, I thought this was an appropriate time to go back to my desk and try to work-- obviously I could barely even see clearly and it was a futile attempt. Went back to sleep until ELEVEN. Decadence! Undeserved decadence!

On the bright side, I became the owner of a sleek silver umbrella last night. I can't reveal my sources, but it has something to do with Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar. I think it could act quite literally as a lightning rod in a thunderstorm-- important to remember, unless I'm feeling really dangerous that day.

Work today until midnight again, probably, and then party for Katy and her birthday.

One of these days....

Oh, and I sold a ticket to someone named Rathbone last night.

You're the leader of the galaxy! Show a little taste!

Despite an okay morning of doing nothing and cuddling in bed with Lucifer (I don't mean the cat, either), today quickly turned into the kind of day that only Elvis Costello can make worth it. I think about the following quote on days like this-- this is from a piece by Patton Oswalt about doing yoga and shooting guns in the same day:

"[It] was the biggest “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” moment I’ve had so far in my life. Guns and yoga are French fries dipped in a milkshake. Scotch and ginger ale. Elvis Costello’s “This Year’s Model” after a bad breakup. Reruns of “Law and Order” and having no life: they’re good together."

It made me laugh when I read it (bus to showcase, incidentally....very, VERY incidentally), and now whenever I'm in a mood and turn to E.C. for help, I think about it. Anyway, some of the aforementioned album and I was pretty okay again. It's so angry and when I listen to it, I think I feel worse about whatever I'm upset about for a little...but then feel wholly better. As if I needed to get really pissed to be okay. I don't know. All I know is that happiness is Elvis shrieking in my ear at a too-high volume.

Last night on the way home from work I had a silly encounter with these two slighty-drunk guys. I was walking to the train and I yawned, and as I was doing so I made accidental eye contact with this guy in a very Slavs! outfit. He wove his way over to me and said "You've got four cavities. I could see them when you yawned." I told him "I've only got two" and they apparently took this as feistiness, which they liked. This guy sort of shook my hand and laughed and then kissed me on the cheek, saying "A kiss because you're beatiful. You're really beautiful. You look like Nicole Kidman, did anyone ever tell you that?" I said that yes, people had. Who knew there were so many people who don't actually know what Nicole Kidman looks like? Right. Anyway, things got sillier from here with his friend trying to get in on the action but not being half as stupidly charming. Cossack-chic (yeah, he can't really be a Cossack AND from Slavs! but I don't give a shit) told me "You've got knockout beauty. I bet guys are going crazy for you." On my negative, he said "Okay, maybe you just don't know it."

Now, call me anything you want, but...I am told I am pretty almost exclusively by drunks or crazies on the street. Do I worry? Nah. I've always liked it, and I always will. Probably.

Anyway, this went on for some time, him asking me if I like "Those guys with the tight jeans and the stringy hair, those hipsters" or if I was more into "Guidos. Or brothers." (His friend was black.)

I came away from the encounter with a momentary lift in self-whatever, AND, best of all....two wrinkled photocopies of this joker's headshot and resume. Don't get me started. This life.

Work is work. I read and sit around. What do I have to complain about? I talked astrology and cards and whatnot with Valois and watched SVU. Please.

New Presidential obsession: Franklin Pierce in general. Second New Presidential Obsession: Zachary Taylor's death. Third: James Buchanan's bachelor status and the way that Bunny Breckinridge is distantly involved with him.

Ain't that peculiar.

Hysterical butterflies.

My GOD, it's fucking cold outside! I almost didn't make it out of bed this morning. I huddled under the covers for at least half an hour after my alarm went off (why was it set so early to begin with?), and then the thought of showering was sickly hilarious, and I could hear my joints screaming as I sat in front of the heater. Oh, god. I don't do well with heat, but....I've never lived in a freezing room before. (Except for the time in high school when my room was so ungodly cold and we couldn't figure out why...until someone realized that the top half of my storm window was slightly open. A family of geniuses.)

Anyway, I'm working today, which is EXCELLENT. I've been going completely nuts for the past few days. I'm worried about work and money, as usual. I hate having to worry about that. I feel like I'm on edge all the time...will I be able to pay rent? Won't I? I volunteered for this lifestyle....but that doesn't mean I have to like it. (Whatever.)

So, Broadway is shuddering back into life after the strike. The shows that were supposed to open are finally opening, and I imagine things'll be back to total normality before long.

The Farnsworth Invention opened last night, and here are some things from the NY Times:

"With billionaire parents now producing bar mitzvah celebrations and sweet-16 parties as if they were major motion pictures, it’s only a matter of time before this spare-no-expense approach is applied to their kids’ school projects. Imagine that Mr. Hedge Fund, with money to burn and many favors to call in, imports a crack combination of writer, director and actors to put across Junior’s oral report with envy-making, A-worthy flair. The resulting effort might well be something like “The Farnsworth Invention,” the new play by Aaron Sorkin that had its strike-delayed opening last night at the Music Box Theater. This information-crammed, surface-skimming biodrama about the creators of television suggests nothing so much as a classroom presentation on a seven-figure budget."

Damn, Ben Brantley! This man can write a zinger like no one else alive today. But you know....I sort of agree. The kind of facile nature of the show was what bugged me the most about it, and I think he's right- that it's more like a report- albeit an earnestly presented one- than a drama.
This is big: "Having made a great success in television, Mr. Sorkin knows its pitfalls and limitations inside out. But it’s hard to avoid the impression that, for all its high-reaching ambitions, “The Farnsworth Invention” often shares the glibness and reductionism of which mainstream television is regularly accused."

Yikes.

The view from the office where I'm working (near Union Square) is amazing. I can't really see it from my desk, of course...but it's beautiful from the bathroom. ;) Much like in CFA! I can see the Williamsburg Bridge, which is kind of fun.

Tonight, I'm going to a Yelp Elite event--- oooooh, so fancy. It's of course turning into more of a headache than something fun...but we'll see what happens. Supposedly, there'll be free drinks. Disaster. After that, there will potentially be latkes and singing at my apartment. I hope. I need something to warm that place up.

Finally, the title of this silly post refers to what was going on at my temp agency this morning-- the funny receptionist who shares a name with one of my good friends (always good for a double-take) was bouncing off the walls about some butterflies that he had ordered online. Excuse me-- some caterpillars. Not butterflies yet. He ordered five for the office and five for his sister/niece in Syracuse (yes!), but was realizing that no one was going to be in the office to receive them, and that they might freeze or something. There was also much discussion of releasing the butterflies into the wild, in order to brighten someone's day....this idea was met with a lot of disapproval from a girl waiting to work, who said "If you let them out...they're going to...end...pretty quickly."

Anyway, I told gchatting friends and friend Thom suggested that the sentence "The receptionist was slightly hysterical about some butterflies he had ordered online" might make a good kick-off for a writing exercise. If only my BUSTI kids had looked at life that way.

To end- Justin Knudsen makes me laugh:

me: and what is this business about crispin glover suing zemeckis? why did he do that?the guy is nuts

Justin: i dont know i kind of what to sue him too though for perpetrating The Polar Express
me: oh god yeah
Justin: did you see it? the hobo looks like tom waits. but its Tom Hanks. and the magic hobo doesnt actually do anything, even though he's the only cool thing about it. my sister rented it and made the family watch it. disaster. a trainwreck, if you will.

PANDER-A DOT COM

I had forgotten how awesome pandora.com is. Product placement. Good.

I went to Union Hall last night with Rinnz to see Meowskers. We caught the last few minutes of Quintus' set, and they were really pretty awesome. They play with Meowskers all the time, but I had never heard them until now. I chatted with the singer after the set...he asked me about theremins (it makes me sound a LOT cooler to leave that statement out of context, so that's just what I'm going to do). Meowskers sounded great. Ben was there. (Ben, do you read this? I think Clam and Thom are my only readers. I'm not worried.) So that was a little awkward. Though we had a nice conversation about the impending release of Sweeney Todd....Ben had good perspective on just how much this movie means to me.

After, I went to Nitzi's and we watched some super old-school Felicity. The pilot is so nineties, it's unbelievable. And of course that means it's so enjoyable.

The Lower East Side sing was PACKED today- at least 30 people! Wonderful. Lots of new faces. Aldo was sick and couldn't go, so I was in charge of setting up the lights and stuff. (Someone asked me if I was a "technician." Why didn't I say yes?) Made me feel important. I had a chance to catch up on a lot of gossip with Lauren, which is always good. We sang "Schenectady," and my standard homesick musings found listeners in the newbies.

I've been reading scripts all night. A lot of what I've been reading takes place in a car...which makes me think about my own car opus, The Civil Wargasm. And I've been thinking about The Civil Wargasm a lot lately, for many reasons-- not the least of which being the fact that I found the perfect guy to play Robert Lee Hodge. He was in the MUDasMAN shows. He just moved to California. But when he's back....oh BOY. I better rewrite the damn thing before then. I gave the script as it is now to this actor and he thought it was funny. Good. Who wants to play Tony?

But this writing thing.... I feel so stupid about it sometimes. I mean, I tell a bajillion people, random people that I meet wherever, that I'm "an actor, yeah...and actor and a writer." And god knows I'm not doing any acting (though Common Thread asked me to be in their new show-- I haven't given them an answer yet), and I don't know when I will....so I always have these dreams that something will just click within me and that I'll be able to drop all the affectations ("Why don't I write on a typewriter? I can only use felt-tip pens!") and actually WORK, work HARD, and just write and get stuff done. And it doesn't matter if it's crap, because as Ed Wood tells us, when you rewrite a script, it just gets better and better...but I have to write the crap first so that then I can make it better. And I have so many ideas, or at least I used to, or at least I think I used to.....but when I sit down at the computer it's all I do to number the pages without giving up on myself.

Ugh.

I just want to listen to Rhapsody in Blue all day.

This is Halloween

So, I ventured to the Village Halloween Parade last night. I knew a bunch of people going, but I couldn't seem to meet up with any of them-- probably because it was UTTER INSANITY on the streets.

I waited almost an hour for it to begin, and I was getting annoyed, but it was pretty work it. There were some beautiful large-scale puppets in the beginning-- skeletons that were operated from backpack-type apparatus', a GIANT skeleton that cast the coolest shadow on the buildings around it, shoes with wings that would run in place, and a whole group of appliances with wings that lit up- clocks, lightbulbs, and toasters! They were obviously my favorite.

Bands were few and far between, and most of them were a combination of a bass drum and 4-5 doleful-sounding horns. Which was fine with me...I love that crap. There weren't a ton ton of floats either....the one that sent me over the edge (in a good AND bad way) was a big flatbed that had a huge cage in the middle, a bunch of gears in front of it, and a huge armchair in the back. In the cage were lots of girls dressed up in sort of sexy zombie outfits, grinding and zombie-dancing, grimly, to a recording of Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera. I just don't know. I just don't know. I got to see the much talked-about zombie "Thriller" dance group, and they were pretty awesome. Lots of people on stilts....which I could sort of do without.

And the costumes! In the "Sexy" category, my award goes to "Sexy Fridge." A duo did an improvement on my Psycho costume by actually having a shower...I was impressed. I saw a Hester Prynne with a giant A on her chest, which made me laugh. There were about 45 dick-in-box guys, every sort of slut imaginable, a Santa Claus (which struck me as odd), drag queens of all shapes, colors, sizes, and costumes....and....A SWEENEY TODD! But his costume choices obviously had taken a cue from the movie trailers, and as a purist, I sort of turn my nose up at that. Plus he had no Mrs. Lovett....though he had a wicked-lookign razor.

It was fun...but to go again I'd either have to be drunk and with friends, or be in it. And I don't know which I'd rather do. Aie.

Then I went home and watched 4/5ths of the original Omen. I was initially disappointed because the Netflix sleeve promised me that there was going to be a hari-kiri death....but there just isn't! Unless they're using it in a super-broad sense to mean 'suicide.' I don't know. Netflix....setting me up for disappointment. But it's great and scary enough that I couldn't manage to get out of bed to turn the light off in the other room before falling asleep. And Gregory Peck is dreamy.

Today and then one more day of work here....though I need the money, I will not pretend to be too sad. I think I'll give myself Monday off, maybe, and then start working immediately, if I can. I am tired.

The Big Shakeup

Exciting news today-- new candy at work! 100 Grand, Oh Henry!, Raisinets, Goobers.....lots more to stuff my gaping maw with. Will the joy never end?

I am in a state of agitated confusion. I have the opportunity to stage manage a group of four shows that run for a weekend in November. Other things I have to do in November are: see Tasia's show in Boston, and hopefully go to the Berkshire foothills all-day singing. I also have to make a living. This is the hardest part.

If I decide to work on the shows, my schedule will get very very very tight and I'll probably have to race around like a lunatic for two and a half weeks. I'll probably be cranky and tired all the time. But I will also probably meet some awesome people (they already seem super cool) that could be possible collaborators. And don't I always try to believe that if I wait until I'm ready, I'll never do anything?

I guess the solution is maybe to cut down a little on everything. Like, I could maybe not go away to sing....even though I really want to. I NEED to see Tasia's show-- it isn't an option. I would feel so bad if I didn't, AND I really want to.


I don't know. No matter what I do, I'm not going to get to do all the things I want to do, AND I'm not going to make as much money as I want to make. So if I accept that now, shouldn't it be okay?

To close....dictionary.com's word of the day is awesome today:

ensorcell \en-SOR-suhl\, transitive verb: To enchant; to bewitch.