Whatsa matter, baby? Somebody made you mad?

I'm constantly getting harangued by homeless people. Mostly it's about my smile. If I'm smiling (if the day is so rare...oh, drama dram drama), they like it and sometimes tell me I'm pretty. If I'm not smiling, they ask me why I'm not. Karl talks about getting upset when people ask him why he isn't smiling, or when they tell him to smile. I don't feel exactly the same way, but.... I don't know. If it's the second situation, 99% of the time, I'll nervously smile in response. If I have a sense of humor that day.

Anyway, the title of this post was said to me last night and it made me...smile. It's nice when I can be reminded not to take myself and everything else so seriously.

A text I got today:

I think that at the conclusion of the Inspector Gadget series, Gadget should have captured Doctor Claw's cat, taken him to the vet, and had him de-clawed. That would have taught kids not only how to be clever, resourceful and ironic, but also the heart-warming rewards of stick-to-it-iveness.

From Craig. My friends. My friends.

I woke up late today. Then I spent over two hours watching the first few episodes of Carnivale, the HBO series from a few years back. I'm in love already. And I want Clea DuVall's haircut.

I'm not sure what's going to change in my life--or when-- but something has to. Because I can't go on with such a low level of productivity/motivation/inclination to do ANYTHING. I'll just stop being alive if I expend any less energy on a daily basis than I am now. Like a slug, or a sloth.

Hey, at least I have a phrenology head t-shirt.

Sigh.

Too hip. Gotta go.

Brad Renfro is dead.

RENT is closing.



What is happening to the nineties?! I don't like this at all.



In what is becoming a pattern, I spent the evening in Astoria last night. After having lunch with Katy in Williamsburg, I met Erin by NYU, and we snuck into Tisch ("I'm so sorry! I just don't have my ID with me!") to deliver a present to her friend, went shopping (ridiculous, as usual), and headed back to her apartment to kill some time by....watching Brokeback Mountain. I'm not sure what possessed us to this, and we had very bad attitudes about the proceedings. we mainly spent the time yelling "BOOBS!" and asking each other questions like "Do we get to see any penis in this movie?" Stupid.

Later, I met up with Misters Cowart and Klein at a bar and proceeded to drink a fair amount. It was great to see them and catch up...they're certainly wilder outside the theatre than they are in in. Were were joined eventually by three of their friends, all guys. As Lauren would say- sausagefest. (Motif to this post? Christ.) I stayed out late and had a wonderful time. Then it was back to Erin's the watch SVU (terrifying) and The Simpsons and to terrorize the cat.

Today's greatest hits include shopping at Trader Joe's, buying an amazing t-shirt with a picture of a phrenology head on it, and wandering around Williamsburg muttering to myself, as I am wont to do.


And I turn to the Stray Cats to keep me going.


Oh! This is intersting-- Jane called me this morning to tell me that a weird package came to the house, missing $1.62 in postage, which contained....MY WALLET! The missing one! Weird, right? The return address is something like "Brooklyn Undeliverable Property" and/or the post office. I don't get it. My bank cards are missing (but of course they were canceled immediately), but it seems like most if not all of my other stuff is in there- including my Girl Scouts of America Lifetime Membership card (phew!) AND my student ID. Which I am overjoyed about.

Who ran the iron horse?

insert fire pun HERE.

An eventful day!

1) I am now the "Certificate of Fitness Holder" for FDNY exams F-90, F-94, and F-33! But you can just call me Fire Guard. Or Fire Drill Conductor. Or person in charge of visually mainting fire alarm systems. (That one isn't as catchy.) I took my tests this morning at 9 MetroTech Plaza in downtown Brooklyn-- which looks strangely like downtown Albany. I was there for about three hours, all told- an unimaginably complex shuffle-dance of getting a number, filling forms out, sitting, going to a window, getting a new number, going across the hall, sitting, waiting....over and over and over. All that matters is that I got my stinkin' certifications. And now I can stop worrying about it.

2) Nitz came over in the afternoon. We kvetched and went to Peter Pan for donuts. Delicious.

3) I worked my first legal shift as House Manager tonight.

4) Aldo gave me a bunch of books yesterday, including an amazing copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice. It was meant to be-- I am seriously in love. It's the pulpiest pulp I've ever read- if Clifford Odets had a lovechild with whoever it is that James Ellroy modeled himself after. It really is coming at the right time- I've been thinking about reading some James Ellroy lately-- it's always a process (wow, this is interesting for other people)-- but this is better. I mean, I KNOW I'm a sucker for stuff like this, where people talk in sentences that sound like machine-gun fire, and everyone's always punching each other. Here's an part that made me grin:


"That's what we're going to do. Kiss me, Frank. On the mouth."
I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church.



And that, folks....is that. Now, excuse me while I go snuggle up with my electric blanket and the aforementioned book.

Well HELLO, dolly!

Got the above from a homeless guy with a cellphone on First Ave. this morning.

In a sad piece of news, Maila Nurmi, otherwise known as Vampira, died a few days ago. She was 86. Here's a little article about it.

Yesterday turned out to be quite the eventful day. After my sluggish morning as a waste of space, I met up with Ariel and Erin in Union Square. We walked, at my request, over to Gramercy Park so I could press my face up to the bars and look at the statue of Edwin Booth. This was after telling Ariel I'd meet her "in front of the statue of George Washington," and having her respond "What statue of George Washington?" Statues were a minor theme of the day. From there, we all wandered over to Eisenberg's and enjoyed some unhealthy food, too much coffee, and the erratic service of our flashily-dressed, Eastern European waitress. She was very cute.

At work, I wasted hours of time and did some studying for my fire guard tests that I have to take tomorrow. I am secretly terrified that I am going to fail. When's the last time I took a multiple-choice test?! Oh god. We'll see.

Annnnnd then I met up with Katy, Molly, and a bunch of people I didn't know at the Hope Lounge, in Williamsburg, to belatedly celebrate Katy's birthday. It was nice to see people-- I hadn't seen Molly since before she went on tour. Came home, watched Extras, crashed. Woke up too late this morning....and now I'm at work. And later hopefully singing. And studying.

Ugh.

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.

Break it, John!

The Guardian has a hip and oftentimes very interesting arts blog that Google Reader gloriously brings to me every day. Here's part of an article about a recent production (at the Menier Chocolate Factory) of La Cage aux Folles and their use of audience participation:

"It can be refreshing when a production breaks down the barriers between audience and performers in this way, puncturing the fourth wall and encouraging interaction...But it needs to be managed imaginatively for it to really work, and there is a tepid quality to the way it is done in La Cage. These interludes felt a little too rehearsed - ironic in a production that otherwise has a distinctly rough-around-the-edges appeal. There was no danger, it all felt a bit forced and half-hearted. They'd tweaked the rules, but only superficially. You got the feeling that any genuine interaction with the performances would be unwelcome. It is understandable why they'd want to minimise the uncertainty that comes with audience involvement... I just wish they'd been a bit more daring and pushed this aspect of the show a little further."

Breaking the fourth wall has come up a few times for me over the past week.

I saw a show last night at La MaMa- "Fountain of Youth," a music/dance/poetry/fusion thing by Akim Funk Buddha, a (this is from his bio) "Director/Composer/Performer/old-school B-boy MC." Um, right. Fellow Box Office Gal Emma and I went, and as we ascended the stairs, we whispered to each other...."I hope there's no audience participation in this." Of course that meant there were, and for silly reasons we wound up in the front row. Withing five minutes the audience had been semi-gently reprimanded (some would say "encouraged") for not vocally responding loud enough. During a freestyle something-or-other, Akim approached Emma with the mic for a sound and she shook her head no. (I would have done the same.) In short, it was an hour of the worst, absolutely worst kind of audience participation-- the kind that is so forced that it detracts from the show and makes people, or at least me, really uncomfortable.

I was telling a recent reader of WTTAN (people write me just begging to read it, don't you know. Oh, wait. This is real life?) about how Rigg's fourth-wall-breaking came about and started thinking about the huge can of worms Craig and I repeatedly opened for ourselves during that show -- the enduring question of WHO IS THE AUDIENCE TO YOU? once you've addressed them directly. Obviously in Akim's show, we were us. In La Cage, I'd probably be someone at La Cage. So that works. While talking about it, I struggled to properly voice the eventual answer Craig and I worked out for Riggs and WTTAN-- the specters of the house, the people Riggs thinks he sees, figments of his alcoholic imagination...I don't even remember what the final answer was. And certainly no one ever agreed with our interpretation exactly-- which is of course fine. It's something I think about when I wonder what I'll do with the script and whether I'll revise it (I'd like to), whether it'll get done again (I sure hope so), and within that, how much it'll change (I don't know).

I know direct address is definitely different that audience participation, and some people might say that there is ALWAYS audience participation, even in shows where the fourth wall isn't broken. I guess that's the hope, if I'm going to be hippy-dippy about it.

Hmm.


Unrelated, here are two things I overheard the other day:


"I don't care where they're coming from, but I think they're going to hell."


"Take a walk, enjoy the weather, enjoy the girls and their sexy asses."

In-DEED.

INTRUDER, INTRUDER.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of some crazy alarm system blaring the above message. The whole thing was something like "Intruder. Intruder. Leave now." I swear to god. It was hellishly loud and went on for a good....twenty-five minutes? Half an hour?

Ahh....the best way to wake up.


And really- what alarm literally says 'Intruder'? Who are they hoping to alert?