Welcome, little month!

I'm afraid I've been terribly lax in all areas blog-related lately. UH-OH! But, after getting reprimanded by someone for not updating, I'm back. Oh yes, I'm back.

Here are some interesting, semi-interesting, and uninteresting things that happened to me lately:

-I got a new job. It's at a craft store in my neighborhood, the kind of place where you can come in and make stuff off a list of established crafts. It's also got stuff for sale in the front. It's completely awesome, run by two wonderful women, and I'm loving working there. Sometimes, I sit and make crafts all day. And get paid. Two days ago, I changed a few lightbulbs, mopped the floor, and then....made a huge snowglobe containing a scene of a horse and pig kissing, walking across a bridge made of spools of thread. What?! It's great, and I'm really happy to have it.

-I got another new half-a-job. Meaning, I was subbing at my friend's babysitting job for a few weeks. In this time, I heard a four-year-old quote Seinfeld, I got bitten, and I was told "I'm going to burn you to a skeleton. And then I'm going to melt your bones." (The kid who told me this wasn't the kid I was actually sitting for. "My" kid, on hearing this threat, said "But I don't even know how to get home from here!")

-I went to Philadelphia for the first time for the Keystone Convention. It was a lot of fun, and I want to go back to Philly to get to actually see the city-- these singing things don't ever really allow for much else.

-Something I sent in to Found Magazine online a long time ago was the Find of the Day yesterday! I loved reading the ridiculous comments. Here it is. People actually did a little Google detective work and found out some cool stuff about it, which I really did enjoy reading.

-Yesterday, I got stuck in the subway with a car full of Aussie Idiotarod participants, covered in eggs, dressed like priests. Ahhh, home.

-I've been slowly working through the first season of Dexter. At first, I could barely watch it because I hated his sister on the show (now his real-life wife, UGH)....but I accepted my dislike and now I'm *really* liking it. I love rooting for someone so amoral. Last winter was when I worked through Carnivale, and though Dexter is no Carnivale, it's good to have a tv show waiting to make me stay up much later than I intend to. Though Michael C. Hall's unnaturally pink lips on occasion unnerve me.

-I passed the 1,000-friend mark on Facebook. How did that happen?

-I saw a terrific show at PS 122-- Pan Pan's "The Crumb Trail." Super weird, way more avant-garde than I can even handle, sort of, but really compelling and exciting. Pan Pan is a really hip Irish company that's been around for 16 years or so. One of the coolest/ most awkard aspects of this show was that one of the actors in it also wrote "Improbably Frequency," that musical that I'm so taken with. I was at PS 122 with one of my coworkers, who prompted me to introduce myself to the company-- I did, and sputtered out such an awkward tale of obsession to this poor man about his musical....he took it like a gentleman, but I was red in the face before it was over. "Uh, oh, yeah, I, uh--I saw your show at 59E59, but I also saw it at the Abbey, yeah, like four years ago? Is that when it was? Um, but anyway---" ad nauseum. Seeing the show made me want to go to Ireland.

-I was also casting my mind back to more British Isles theatre-- the space where we sang in Philadelphia was RIPE for a Shunt Collective-style peripatetic ghosty play. Give me money! I will do cool things, New York!



It's clear that I've moved solidly into the "uninteresting" category here, so I'll stop. But let's hope I'm better about writing in February.

Cold, tired; I am a huddled mass!!

I hate hot weather...but man, I'm wishing it was some season other than winter right now. I'm freezing. It takes a toll.

I got a new job! I'll tell you all about it later. Right now, I'm getting under the covers.

Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe last night. He is from Schenectady. Reppin' harcore, Mickey Rourke.

Yeah, goodnight.

new year?

oh, yeah?

Excuse me, Miss Yvonne...

...but before you go making out with everyone in the Playhouse, how about forkin' over the gift?


let A = "It is cold outside and in my apartment"
let B = "My bed is warm"
let C = "Pee-Wee's Playhouse is the only thing that can make me sit up in bed"

A ---> B
B ---> C
:.
A ---> C



Those proofs make no sense, but neither does Magic Johnson and Magic Screen being cousins. And that is why I love it!

Upstate worms will eat my head.

After an unequivocally terrible night at work, I treated myself to the movies and went to the Sunshine to see 'Synechdoche, New York.' Though my coworked warned me that I was completely insane, and called me a 'freak' for going on such an emotionally fraught evening, I thought it seemed like a good idea. In the end, it was. I really liked the movie, though I didn't love it in the intense way I do, say, Eternal Sunshine. Phillip Seymour Hoffman (aka 'the fat guy from 'Twister,'' right, Rinnz?) was fucking great, as I figured he would be-- I mean, so was everybody. I don't know how anybody acts in a movie, to be quite honest, and I don't know how anybody acts in a movie like this. I think it'll be a long long long time before I can ever be halfway decent on screen. This isn't really based on anything. But but but, the performances were really, really wonderful...two of the weirdest movies I've seen this year both starred Samantha Morton, and I might be in love with her. She's so strange. Jennifer Jason Leigh showed up briefly as an evil lady with huge boobs and a fake German accent. Amazing. The 'Schenectady' of the movie bore no resemblance to the real thing-- I laughed when someone said something about catering to 'blue-hair suburban regional theatregoers,' because there aren't too many of those in Schenec....but then again, there's no modern, beautiful theatre complex, either, and no one staging weird, avant-garde shows in big venues which attract large, paying audiences, either. But I'm no complaining, I'm really not. The Schenectady of the movie looked like a pretty darn nice place to live. (My one question for Charlie K. would be-- why did you not choose to use the real Schenec zip code 12345 when you showed us their address??!?!?! Chance of a LIFETIME, sir!)

ANYWAY. It was super long, there was a couple AGGRESSIVELY making out sitting in front of me, and some know-it-alls were driving me nuts afterward- but on the whole, it was a really satisfying antidote to sadness. Even though it was really sad.

After the movie, I slogged to the First Avenue L station, where I wound up embroiled in some bizarre subway talk with the three guys sitting around me. One works with Emma at a restaurant, and so I felt safe accepting part of a cookie he offered me. THIS IS WHY I CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO TALK TO PEOPLE WHEN I AM ALONE. Why do I put this stuff on the internet? Do I want people to think I'm an idiot? There was a lot of solidarity-speak re: how much the subway sucks, a brief discussion abt. rat kings (I'm a one-trick pony), and a lot of nervous laughter on my part.

Speaking of me being an idiot, I'd like to point out that I've passed the one-year anniversary of getting blackout drunk and losing my purse in the LES, and I'd like to pat myself on the back. I think I can almost laugh about it now....?

It's snowing out now, and everything looks beautiful. I wish I could stay in and be cozy all day. I make a trek to the bagel place down the street where I enjoyed a "candy peppermint" bagel, which was striped red and white and essentially tasted like it had candy canes ground up in it. Um, yum.

I'm going home on Tuesday morning. I'm glad.

Charlie Kaufman!! You harsh master.

(And I don't mean Public School!)

PS1:  Japanese Cat Humiliation.

PS2: Monkey Jockeys.

Unresolved.

Yesterday, I took myself to 59E59 to see Rough Magic's 'Improbably Frequency,' a show I had seen four years earlier (JESUS CHRIST) in Dublin.  This was when I was visiting Ben, during Christmas break of my sophomore year, and we were looking for a show to see.  He had free tickets to a new play that looked super boring-- living room set, young actors wearing t-shirts-- so we opted for the 'unwaged' tickets at the Abbey for this show that we knew nothing about.

It turned out to be one of the best and most memorable theatrical experiences of my life.  It's a musical about the Irish Free State during WWII, and though that sounds like just about the worst premise ever, it is insanely silly, inventive, hilarious, creative, exciting....I'll just go on and on, so I won't. It's got historical characters-- Erwin Schroedinger (played as a sex-crazed maniac in ledehosen); the poet John Betjeman (in a straw boater, carrying a teddy bear);and writer Myles na gCopaleen (aka Flann O'Brien). It's got shamrocks shaped like swastikas. It's got the most delightful music.  A religious service for Guiness. Sex in verse.  EVERYTHING AMAZING.

Anyway, I heard it was coming to NY and I freaked out and couldn't wait to see it. I had a few moments of being nervous-- what if it wasn't as good as I remembered it being? 

BUT IT WASSSSSSSSSSSS oh my god it WAS.  I was so delighted to be seeing it again after all this time, and it was just how I remembered it, with the exception of a few cast changes.  The bluehairs around me were half happy, half asleep-- and the quartet next to me left at intermission. Because they were idiots.  It's just so wonderful, and contains so many elements that I can only hope to have in all of my future theatrical projects.  I admire this company immensely, and am so happy that they managed to bring the show over here.  In my half-imagined, cockamamie schemes that I liked to think about late at night, the ones where I go to England or Scotland to work....I think I should include room for Rough Magic.  I mean, why not?

So, I say, GO! if you are able. It runs 'til January 4th in New York.  It's fucking great.

The week+ since my birthday has been good.  I shot a short film earlier this week, in the most incredible apartment I've ever been in.  Enormous windows, through which you can see: the Brooklyn Bridge. My god, it was beautiful.  I was hypnotized by the lights from the cars going over the bridge. I don't know how anyone could actually live there.  The shoot was fun, if totally insane and hectic.  The writer/director, a guy I know from school, did a nice job holding it together under pressure, and the other actor was a nice guy who was amenable to lots of goofing around.  That's basically all I need in a collaborator.  Well, maybe not ALL.  But I wore a crazy red dress and drank a lot of fake gin and had a grand old time.  Somewhere along the way, perhaps on Tuesday night when I walked around for ten minutes in the rain at 3 AM looking for a cab in DUMBO (not a good idea), I got sort of sick. Which blows.  But at least I'm going home soon and can be sick there.

Going home is a source of stress, of course. I don't know when I'm going to be able to go back to the Electric City, or how long I can stay.  And I have to make up my mind about New Year's Eve-- I've been thinking I might go to Boston, but I'm too lazy to figure it out. Even though my horoscope told me finalize travel plans the other day. Eekerz!

Holiday parties are building up; I hate to admit it, but Midtown looks beautiful; my shopping is not done. Ah, Christmas.