Happy New Year!

So I totally don't want the last post to be my last of the year. So, happy new year! And stuff. Now go out, get drunk, vomit on the brown line, pee in an alley, and have a rockin' good time... that you can't remember. Or something.

Cheers!

That is all.

Insert Clever Title Here

So, like, we leave for the airport in less than 5 hours. Laundry never got done (see comment on the previous posting), I'm completely fucking exhausted, and so naturally, I decided that now was a good time to shower and get rid of the winter coat on my legs so that I could walk around Honolulu and blind everyone with my paleness.
Here's the thing. I am, like, sooooo bad at being female in this society. I really don't know how to shave my legs without cutting myself to the point where I actually have scarring. Recently, I rediscovered the hair depilatory, a stinky, appalling chemical creation for "safely" removing unwanted hair. It's been updated so that you can scrape the depilatory from your legs with a razor-like device that has no blades. So it might be a burny, stinky process, but I cannot cut myself. Sweet. I got so into it that I decided to clean up the nether regions down-there area bikini line to beachy perfection. And then I got a little creative. I thought I might errr.... make it look a bit more interesting.
But here's the thing: contrary to popular opinion, I don't see too well without my glasses. So it's a bit off. Center. Like, really. And I fear I may have burned my legs et al with chemical evilness. Also, I have just discovered a patch on my shin that I totally missed. Shit.
But what's really scary? Bil doesn't even seem to have noticed it at all.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

That is all.

Distraction

I had never missed a change in my life before tonight. I'm all amped up now that I have. It sucks because I don't like to allow myself to fuck up, and I felt like an amateur and an idiot. I'm always harder on myself than I am on anyone else, and it's really in the larger scheme of things a small issue, but it'll take a while to calm down and relax about this. I leave for Hawai'i in two days and I haven't even done the laundry necessary to go. I am getting all of the costumes together for the 1 night remount of Dumb Waiter and I am trying to scrounge up work for the rest of....well, life actually. Shit.
Also, I have just realized that Sarah Elizabeth is in the audience tonight to see the show so that she can see the changes. And now she's missed that one. Oops. What an asshole.

that is all.

and Scene!

Transference closes in one week. I will come back from my Hawaiian vacation to .... unemployment. shit.

That is all.

hmmmm

So I went to spray Lysol into all of the shoes this evening, like I always do. I should mention that I am on lots of Robitussin right now. And I was wandering around feeling good, getting everything sprayed. lalalalala. And I went to put the Lysol back. Right next to the Lysol... which meant the aerosol can in my hand was.....hair spray. shit.

that isall.

sick as a death.

I would blame it on the cold meds, and it definitely could be a side effect of the cough suppressant. *cough cough cough lung cough cough* I am still coughing obscenely and now it seems as if my head is floating somewhere up and to the left of my body. And i have become a mouthbreather. damnit. Grammar is less than important in conveying my absolute disconnection with the world. conversation eludes me. so apparently does the "shift" key. and for the record, I just typed "shit, delete, shirt, delete, delete, shit, delete, shift." And the word "delete" is looking more and more wrong to me. i think one of the actors just called me baby. shit. brain is not functioning.

that is all.

Tuesday, 14 November 2006, 1:18 AM

It's easier to demonize someone who has committed an amoral or unethical act than it is to forgive them, but I think forgiveness must feel nicer than being judgmental does. I still can't forgive those past transgressions. And they are eating me alive.
That is all.

Beautiful...

I wish Bush's dialogue was written by Aaron Sorkin.... but can we just celebrate for one moment: Democrats win hugely in the House of Representatives, Jon Tester beat Conrad Burns in Montana, VA is still to close to call, but Webb is up on Allen, and there will probably be a recount, BUT Webb is UP... AND......

Rumsfeld Resigns!!!!

The Neo-Cons are falling.

A good day indeed.

That is all.

High five!

That is all.

Just Wow.

My black and white cat, Pepe, cries when he thinks there are no people around. I guess he's afraid of being abandoned. I understand that a bit myself. I'm 25 years old and I still feel that way sometimes. There are some things that we just don't grow out of, I guess.
I don't miss California, but I do miss the way things used to be. I miss the comforting knowledge that things were stable. It was a sad little lie, but it was infinitely comforting. I miss the people that were once all together, creating (yes, I do have that here, and it is v. comforting, but not quite the same), and working (and gossiping) in tandem. We all knew each other's secrets then, and knew each other maybe better than we knew ourselves.
And now we're all off in the Diaspora, floating on our own little islands with our own new circles, new communities of understanding. And we still want the same things, but we are maybe a bit disaffected, discouraged. It's a weird thing, this theatre community; it seems we start over fresh, too often, creating a falsified sense of intimacy in our minds as we jump into the next big thing, the next show. And when it's over, we're off again, the Diaspora calling, and we answering, diving in again, another show, another group, more false intimacy.
I'm not good at reaching out, at calling old friends, at keeping these cherished friendships alive. I'm terrified of rejection on some level, a failing of my own personality, perhaps. Partly too, it's hard because I have spent so much time running away from certain parts of my past -- the baggage that weights a person down -- that I have lost the ability to aptly communicate honestly with anyone any more.
It's not that I don't love the people here in Chicago, either. I do. But it's damned frustrating for an antisocial misanthrope to start afresh, again, in building new friendships, new connections. I can put on the act of being outrageous, talking freely about sex, love, comedically failed relationships, and the like, but in the end, I have revealed nothing too dear about myself. I won't tell you about the pain I've felt -- when my parents split up and my father told me my mom just wasn't very interesting, when I unsuccessfully (obviously) tried to off myself in high school during a severe bout of insomnia, when I accidentally drugged myself into a drunken stupor freshman year of college and what happened after. There's some dark shit for you.
Whether I like it or not, I am like my father in that I compartmentalize my life. Certain people know certain things about me, but others see me in a very different light. No one has all the facts. Maybe not even me.
I saw the first run-thru of Closer last night. It really fucked me up mentally, but I had a dinner date with an old friend from college afterwards, so I'm slowly dealing with how it affected me today. It's going to be a good show. I will see it on opening, but after that, I am booked solid through the rest of the run. I need to stay busy now for my own mental health. It's been a crazy and fucked up month. (But our 1 year anniversary was lovely.)

That is all.

Amazing

That is all.

Normal?

Somewhere in the last week and a half, I have gone into such an extreme tailspin that I have forgotten what normal might feel like. So many ups and downs (mostly downs). I am exhausted, but I cannot sleep. I have never wanted to get the hell out of here more that I do now. The cavalier attitudes, the absurd picture of GWB on the wall in the "library," the oppressive nature of it all... it's absolutely stifling. It's actually as if I can't breathe.
Somewhere in here, there used to be a sense of grouchy, self-deprecating humor... see this entry for a taste of said humor. Or this gem. If humor is what you're looking for, this is not the entry for you. I have none left. I've become terribly boring. And I totally miss Chicago. It's officially my home.

Maybe the worst part of all of this is the self-doubt aspect. What if I am wrong? What if I'm over-reacting? I hate feeling so alone. It's terrible up here in my head. I can't wait to get back to work so that I can be occupied with other more pressing matters. Goddamn it!!!!!!! Oh, yes, there are lovely bouts of severe uncontrollable anger, mixed in with crying over literally what seems to be nothing... as Bostonians are to honking horns, I am to the facial waterworks--at a mere moment's notice, I can turn these babies on. This family reunion should be fun! I just hope there's enough booze. It's gonna take some serious drinking to get through it. God help us all.

When I return to Chicago I will be better, promise. I'm just thoroughly ensconced in this mess right now, and I have no useful escape. It's really shitty. But I will conspire to return to my cynical, bitter, self-deprecating, bitchy, "fucking actors!," eye-rolling, grumpy, misanthropic self upon my return to the windy city. I can't wait. Seriously. I've got my bag all packed up in anticipation. It's going to be a long time until I return to CA. It's too hard now. And it's really going to suck after.

God, people, why are you reading this awful drivel? Seriously? If you are reading this, I am really doubting your sanity. My own is already really shaky... I am probably going to lose friends over this... it's so bad. Do yourself a favor and stop reading. Right now. Ok?

That is all.

Mere minutes left. I feel absolutely ill. Fuck him for making me feel like this.

Silent Sigh

I've been here not 5 days, and already I have made some interesting and frightening discoveries about the Geminis in my family. My immediate family. I don't know what to do. I have some very damning information about them both. Not that I want to hurt either of them or anything.... it's just that each in his/her own way is being very deceitful and now, I feel similarly because I am burdened with these secrets. I hate feeling like this.
I am sick from one particular discovery. I thought that we had moved past all this.

I guess I thought that people changed.

I was so wrong.

People don't change.

Alphonse Karr, a French writer, once said, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." The more things change, the more they stay the same. So many things have changed during the last decade in my life, and still certain themes persist.

I wish I could go back to not knowing. Ignorance was bliss.

And knowledge makes me use overused colloquialisms. Life is truly not fair.

I don't think I have the capacity to forgive anymore. I reached my threshold for forgiveness in December of 1999. Take a number... we're running about 7 years behind schedule and there's quite a line... you might want to bring a sack lunch.

And you wonder why I trust no one? This is one of the big reasons. I'll never trust him again.

Confidential to my two readers: if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I apologize. I'm discombobulated right now... apparently I'm no stronger at 25 than I was at 15. This is not a comforting notion.

That is all.

Oh, to be in So Cal.

Weird to be back here after nearly a year away. I hadn't seen my family (except my mom) in nearly a year, and I hadn't seen mountains in nearly a year. My parents' house is like the Winchester Mystery House.... always under construction. It's strange that it has always metamorphosed somewhat between my increasingly rarer visits. It's hard to see the house in which I grew up anymore. So much of that has been lost in the addition of new rooms, new decor, new furniture and carpet, even new toilets. This perpetual state of construction has been going on for nearly five years with no signs of slowing or stopping. It's frightening.
I'm not going to lie; I love my family and I love seeing them, but I hate being here. All of my demons are here, and it's always a fight in my head to be here. This is really and truly no longer my home, and it's weird to hear my parents tell me I should move closer to home, as my home is now Chicago, where I live.

Demon #1

Being in suburban Southern California, where I grew up, reminds me tremendously of the demons I tried to escape in college, and later the greater expanse of the country. I was literally running away from shit; tragically obvious, I know. But what else could I do? I was too cowardly then (and now) to face certain of those issues, those demons that even now haunt me in the night. Running away where they couldn't find me was preferable.
There is a person who used to live in town (don't know if this is still the case, hope fervently it's not) who I am very afraid of running into. You never want to revisit the people who damaged you a bit. I like to pretend that I'm a strong woman, but i might just crumple if I run into this person. It would be a combination of anger, rage, fear, bile: an overload. I've been dreading it ever since I found a note on my car two and a half years ago, taunting me, "Why aren't we frends enymore?" There was more but I'm seeing red recalling it. And yes, I spelled that verbatim. There is so much wrong with this statement, and no, I'm not sharing more than that with some strange large man in his underpants chillin' on the 'net at 3am in Kansas... if you really wanna know, get me drunk and ask me. Very simple.

Demon #2

Some people seem to find it funny that I once had acrylic nails and rarely left the house without some sort of makeup on. This is truly a reflection of where I come from. In my natural state, I soooo don't belong here. Took my sister shopping for a dress for her senior Homecoming dance today and remembered all this anew. Firstly, I just don't bother with makeup. I tell people it's because Bil's totally stuck with me anyway, so why bother, but it's a pain in the ass, it totally fucks up my skin, and I'd much rather apply makeup to someone else's face that I can see, than struggle to see my own face in a mirror sans glasses. Also, I'd rather leave that run-on sentence than repair it. So we go to this really high-end, expensive boutique with pushy salesladies who try to pretend that they're younger than they really are. So lame. They kept trying to get M. into these fancy (and pricey...like my half of the rent pricey) ill-begotten halter dresses. I'd try to help her tie the dress, and Pushy Saleslady Susan would push me out of the way in her efforts to make a sale. Had I been in $200 jeans, and a faux-vintage T instead of my fave Guster concert T and a pair of $4 thrift store Gap jeans, maybe she would have been nicer to me, but really I have the credit card, and the car keys... my sister can't get the $$$$ dress without me, no matter how much she begs.
There's a huge emphasis placed on appearance in this town. Nails, pores, hair, clothing. It seeps in and takes control of what might otherwise be perfectly lovely human beings. It turns them into catty horrible fashion robots who don't understand that wide-legged cropped pants make their short, fat legs look shorter and fatter. (I, too, have my catty moments.) I hate that people judge me this way. Mostly, I don't like being judged by people I don't really even know, and secondly, I dislike being judged based on such shallow grounds. It hardly seems kind or fair to me. Yes, I am an awkward, short, pimply twenty-something who hides behind my giant glasses. What's it to you? If you talked to me, I could explain to you that the '70's disco look did not, in fact involve tie-dye. At all. Really. I promise. Sigh. It's really OK. I'm quietly judging you back.

Demon #3

Early mornings and an order of sudden adult-onset ADD, with a side of narcolepsy, please! It's part of the process of cutting off the stimulants from my system. I have no attention span and worse, I am perpetually on the verge of napping wherever I go. I'm so tired that I'm actually nearly slurring my words. It's a bit like being drunk without the fun side effects. This, people, is the real reason that I have never successfully quit before. Because I'm deathly afraid of driving without the influence of my favorite stimulant on my body. No amount of caffeine can compete with my exhaustion. I get halfway through a story and get distracted and cannot for the life of me remember where to go from there... or even what I was just saying. It's disappointing.
My family believes that travel just makes me extremely weary. Little do they know.

Demon #4

oh, crap.... I'm two hours into the writing of this stupid little blog and I just realized that I still need to check all the doors (all 7 of them) and lock them..... be right back.......................
OK. I'm back. And i can't remember what I was going to write. But, god, I'm tired..... off to bed.

Also, FYI, in my dozing state, I have plenty of time to consider Taylor Hicks, which is decidedly a good thing.

That is all.

Product Placement in my Dreams....

So I had a really weird dream the other morning. Basically, Bil was leaving me for some other woman, which you know, is weird. And so I chased him to a parking lot. A parking lot attached to a very large, evil multinational fast food giant. So there were the fucking golden arches mocking me as I tried to smack some sense into my stupid bastard of a cheating husband. And then I went back home and grabbed my cats (who had multiplied from 2 to 10), collected all of them, got onto a bus furnished like a crazy granny's attic, and went to work.... where I got a call from a doctor who said I had cancer and was going to die. So, I left work, called a friend and went to Konak at 10 in the am and got drunk. So basically, a crappy dream made crappier by the fact that I got dumped essentially in the parking lot at that damned fast food joint (who I won't name here because they've gotten enough free advertising in my skull while I'm trying to enjoy a sick and twisted dream). What the hell does that all mean? So, I'm boycotting that evil fastfood giant.

Also, a note to those who would mock my sick and twisted love of a certain AlabaMAN silver-haired singer: at least I'm not subjecting you to my nostalgic appreciation of say, Rick Astley, or worse, Chris DeBurgh. Be good, Hollywood.


This boy's pretty cute.....

That is all.

For Fuck's Sake! or How I learned to stop being anal retentive about bad grammar. But not really.

So here's the thing: I don't care what degrees that you have, if you have been in school for a minimum of 20 years, you should know that there is no comma in the following sentence: "She is an excellent presenter, who is engaging and warm and really connects well with students." This is an unneccesary comma. Gah! And how about this gem: "Writing a letter of recommendation from an excellent teacher like Dr. X; who is highly regarded and respected is one of the few things in life that makes you realize how certain teachers have a lasting impact on your career development." Obviously, this one's English teacher was not one of those that made an impact.
Perhaps I'm anal retentive to a fault, but what happened to respect for language? I'm sure it's not just English that is being beaten in a dank warehouse and left to die there. Are we so entrenched in a text-message/e-mail/chat-room anything goes society that we have forgotten the basic tenets of our language? Yes, English is a fucking difficult language, but it's not like basic grammar rules are the difficult aspects of the language.
Ok. I should get back to work. Really. (That's a fragment, you know, and so is this.)

That, peevish readers, is all.

Should I be concerned??

The guy in the office next to mine is listening to what sounds like Russian radio, which, in itself is a bit odd, but not horribly so. Also, he sounds like he might be either having a heart attack, or getting off, a la our party conversation last night at Philip's. Would anyone else be curious about this?????

That is all for now. . . will write about my cynicism when I'm not procrastinating at the office, listening to what sounds like a suspiciously large old man either dying or experiencing la petite mort. Oh, to work in a Psych ward.... errrr, Department.

That is all.

Out of Context

Hit kind of a low point last night (really low... not a good night). I decided that if I could write down and articulate all of the bad shit that has been bringing me down as of late, I could get it out of my system. I filled a page, margins, all of it. That's a lot of shit. So much bad shit since the 1st of June. Jesus.
So, ever the Libra, I decided that I needed to balance it out with some positive things that have happened this summer. (I should add that by this point, I had poured a small amount of vodka into my Coke--it was that sort of night.) My highlights list had seven items. Seven. And some of those are shapeless concepts and not events.
My summer highlights:

• Drunken debauchery.


• Saw two of my uncles and my cousin and her husband.


• Did some theatre.


• Considered finding another career path.


• Was called "sexy" by very drunken, much older, somewhat married, possibly insane Communist.


• Read some books.


• Dreamed of something better.

That is it. The rest of the page is filled with the sort of drunken and depressed bile that comes from realizing how out of balance one's life really is.

For years I have been in perpetual motion, running away as much as possible from the issues that I have accrued over my nearly quarter century on this earth. And when I can't run away, I turn them into humor. It's a great defense mechanism. But when all of that is stripped away, and I'm alone in my back porch-y area, drinking and depressed, I'm still the same fucked up person that I always was. Because in moving so much, I have managed not to streamline my baggage, but to accrue more with each passing year, each new trip. At some point, I won't be able to carry it all around anymore. What will happen to me then? Will I gracefully let the oldest shit just fall away, my parents' divorce leave my consciousness for once and all? Or perhaps that's when I can finally let go of all those other things: the darker issues, the ones that I almost never talk about, the things that I've seen in my life that no one should ever have to see.

I was once a sensative kid. Now I'm a callous, bitter and jaded adult. I like control, being in control, of everything around me; it's why I enjoy stage managing. I keep a tight reign on my emotions (at least the dark undercurrent of emotions that I like to pretend do not exist: the depression, the anger, the angst, the hopelessness, the uncertainty.) I will not be fooled again. There is safety in control. And if I don't experience a full range of emotions in this lifetime, it's still better than admitting to the world how low I can go.

I like riding on the el because I enjoy watching all of the people. I wonder about them. Who they are; where they are going, and coming from; what makes them tick. I want to know all about them. But I don't want to actually connect. Because that scares the shit out of me too. I can only keep control over my life if I keep my circle very small. I lived in Boston for 10 months, and only in the last month that I lived there did I actually have any real friendships: people with whom to hang out, people with whom to have a drink, people who had silly nicknames for me. It took me 9 months to connect to anyone. Had Bil not been there with me, my roommates would not have even known about my birthday. There is safety in keeping everything internal, to a point. But sometimes it all blows up in my face.

I don't know anymore where exactly I'm going with all of this, but I know where I'm coming from, and it isn't pretty. I haven't yet reached my own personal catharsis, but I am hopeful. What is life without hope?

And on that note, dear readers (and random asshole from Arkansas who is reading this at 3:30am on a Tuesday, and still doesn't bother to comment), I will leave you with a song lyric that once meant something to me, maybe it still applies; you be the judge:

"Disarm you with a smile, and cut you like you want me to, / Cut that little child inside of me and such a part of you, / Oh, the years burn..."
-- from "Disarm", written by Billy Corgan and performed by the Smashing Pumpkins on their best album.

That is all.

My cat was making sweet, sweet love to my sandals, and now she's smoking a cigarette. Where did I go wrong?

That is all.

Goddamn it!

Fucking A. I am so fucking sick of being poor. I was supposed to get paid today by UIC. I go out to get some lunch and check my balance at the ATM: $0.00. Nothing. It's direct deposit, which I totally don't trust, so I rush back to work to find out where my money is. I can't find the HR lady. Christ. So I go back to my office, think about how much I would love to eat lunch, then think about my lack of lunch-buying ability, and get back to work, hungry. I run into HR lady in the hall, who says, "I was wondering where you were; I need you to sign this paper so that your payroll can go through." I sign the paper then and there, and--bonus!--it says that before I have even gotten paid, I've gotten a 31 cent raise. Ok, that's cool. She tells me that she'll get back to me ASAP when she knows more about when I'll get paid.

I wait, mouth watering in anticipation of lunch. . .

And I wait.

And still, I continue to wait.

I send her a pleasant, but assertive e-mail requesting more information regarding when my money will come rolling into my account.

I get no response.

I go over to her office.

She's out somewhere (probably eating a nice delicious tasty lunch).

I drink some coffee.

And some tea.

And daydream of food.

I go over once again to her office. She's there! And she has no information for me. So I calmly draw and quarter her because I am enraged and hungry and want to cry with frustration. But then what I really said was, "And about how long does this sort of thing typically take to be corrected?"

And she replies in a long, drawn-out, roundabout fashion that it should only be a few more days. DAYS?!?!?! I thought we were talking hours. I am hungry now, and I'll be dead from starvation in a matter of days! And I'll owe the bank more than the sum total of my paycheck in a matter of days!@!!!! So, I (less calmly) told her that that was unacceptable. That I was counting on this paycheck. And I thought about the fact that I couldn't afford to live anymore. That I've been waiting on money from several different places and all of them have been slow to pay up. That I have dug myself into a fucking hole of debt to helping out other people. That I have been working 14-15 hour days most of the last couple of weeks on multiple jobs. That I have not been paid or reimbursed for anything since June and I have moved since then. And mostly that I am fucking hungry.

But what I said was simply that I needed the money. That it would be great if she let me know ASAP about it.

And she gave me some sob story about how she has all of these new employees and she was here until 8pm on Monday night getting all the paperwork right. And this is the worst time of year for new hires. And blah blah blah. And I really don't give a fuck, because I am standing in front of you, starving because you fucked up my paperwork.

So judge me all you want. I am angry. And I'm not sorry about it. I WAS GOING TO GO GROCERY SHOPPING TONIGHT! Goddamnit! I fucking hate bureaucracy and bullshit.

I'm going to quietly put my head down on my desk now and have a good quiet cry in my office. And I'm going to bill the bastards for time spent.

I'm too mad to post anything cheeky about Taylor Hicks.

GAH!

That is all.

So I had a bit to drink last night. And the night before, and the night before that, and the one before that too. And all that drinking caught up with me this morning. I felt like there were some spare bit of hardware from the set clanging around in my brain, and I totally looked like shit. Also, I remember just enough about the ride home last night to be assured that I probably need to apologize about ... something ... to ... someone. So I totally called in sick today and have spend the entirety of the day cat-napping on the porch, reading and rehydrating. I haven't called in sick to work in at least a year, and I think I owed it to myself.
Also, a strange observation: drinking makes me have really vivid, resonant dreams, the kind that really stick to my brain after I wake up. And sometimes, they are kinda sexy... So if I'm acting all weird around you, rest assured it's nothing personal, my brain is just very errr... active. *wink*

And now, to make Bil laugh, and to further confuse Hollywood, (who seems oddly disturbed by this, as he's brought it up disparagingly the last several nights), the Taylor Hicks newslink of the day.

That is all.

Fuckin' A

I was totally in a brawl outside the bar last night. You should see the other guy. Haha.

Also, had to defend my obvious adoration of Taylor Hicks -- please don't judge me....
Sigh.
Will post more after I have retrieved my brain... if only I knew where I left it... maybe the office, the theatre, the gutter... gah.

That is all.

ummm...

So this impertinent little Word paper clip is giving me bedroom eyes. Should I be concerned? Do I get to say, "Mr. Paperclip, that is sexual harassment and I don't have to take it!"? (punctuation is proving difficult right now.) I swear it just undressed me with its googly-eyes.


And a guy who I think was nuts called today while I was playing receptionist. He said his name was "Taylor Taylor." I think it's a sign.

This is what office work does to me.

'nuff said.

That is all.

Blorch.

It turns out there's some truth in that old idea about heat and alcohol making you drunk and sleepy very quickly. So I only made it through 1 glass of wine last night before conking out on my back porch. I woke up at 4:30 in the am, all nestled in a chair by the window, through which a slightly less hot breeze was blowing. i should have stayed on the porch, though... it was wicked hot in the bedroom. I'm really tired of no A/C.

FYI, this post is entirely procrastination. I just don't feel like writing flowery letters to big shot shrinks quite yet. Stupid shrinks. Bah.

For all you new readers out there (you know who you are): I'm really not as angry as that last major post would suggest. Really. BUT. I was feeling kinda pissed off at that moment. And maybe a bit childish. A bit. STOP JUDGING ME! Gah!

Ok, must get back to work so that I can leave early to go get shoes and suspenders and a belt and maybe some glasses.

Oi!

And speaking of temperatures rising, get a load of this. Hot.

That is all.

Pause. Sigh.

My favorite band is playing in town tonight. The show starts in 7 minutes. I am cleaning my house and getting costumes together. And preparing for the party tomorrow night. Sigh.

And I just couldn't bring myself to buy tickets to see the PopTarts American Idols tour. Mostly, because I would be the only person there over 16 who didn't escort my own kids. And it sold out before I could get them. So, no Guster and no Taylor Hicks this summer. Worst summer ever.

And no iPod. Sigh.

That is all.

Harry Potter in Equus

HaHaHa. That's really all I can say.

Also, sigh.

That is all.

holy shit

There's a vortex of huge, forboding black clouds swirling around the Sears Tower right now. And it totally came out of nowhere. Ah, Midwestern summers....

I wonder what Taylor Hicks would think?

That is all.

Oy Vey!

I can't believe what a trying month this has been. I've been working 14-hour days for the last week, and I am so fucking tired. We finally moved the last of our stuff into the new place. But about a week ago, someone broke into our old place and stole whatever looked like it had any kind of resale worth: my iPod, my keyboard (piano, not computer), and God only knows what else... I haven't unpacked everything to find out yet. And my favorite skirt and my favorite jeans were attacked by a red vampire skirt, and now they look all bloody. I also have reason to believe that the theives stole my sense of humor. Bastards. I wonder if I can write that on the police report...?
I am beyond heartbroken about my shit being missing. And it pisses me off that nothing of Bil's was touched. I'd like to note that his saxophone was still right where we had left it. I know that I shouldn't feel that way... but I feel what I feel. It's not fair. And I know that life's not fair, but I'm totally fucking tired of it. Why do the Ken Lays of the world manage to die, convicted, but free (and on vacation, no less), and poor blighted fuckers just keep getting fucked over? I'm sure that money does not, in fact, equal happiness, but I sure am tired of being poor and working like a dog for so little. And I'm fucking tired of being victimized! Fuck all these motherfucking bastards who think that they can just take from others without asking, trading, or buying. I have to fucking work my tail off to get by. And fuck all the fucking bastards who think that women are there to be fucked-whether they want to be, or not.
I am ANGRY. I am a simmering pot of rage, just building up enough steam to boil. And the less sleep I get, the more angry I seem to become. And I really hate being angry. I really do.

I've been working on a production of Zoo Story and The Dumb Waiter. And it's sometimes hard for me to watch Jerry's long-ass monologue in the middle of Zoo Story. Because at one point he totally loses it and goes a bit crazy. There's a line, "...always check bleeding..." that is sort of stuck in there amidst everything, when he's trying to convey the need to connect with something outside of himself. And it always breaks my heart. The other show's a bit lighter... but it's Pinter, so not really... (Pause.) But, a bit. (Silence.) Yes, a bit. (Pause.)

I miss my iPod.

(Pause.)

We're having a housewarming party on Saturday. Mostly to raise funds for Bil's AIDS Marathon. I really hope that I can pull this off. It's a bit daunting. The house is a disaster. Oy.

(Silence.)


There's a woman on my floor at work who was been bitching all yesterday about the fact that she has pink eye. I've been washing my hands extra carefully.

(Pause.)

I was given what should have been 40+ hours worth of work, and I finished it all already. It's 11:00am on Thursday. I'm taking tomorrow off.

(Silence.)

I miss my keyboard. I was really getting pretty good at playing the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. By the time I can replace the keyboard, I'll be back at the beginning, again.

"WE'VE GOT NOTHING LEFT! NOTHING! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

(Silence.)

And my iPod totally had tons of Taylor Hicks on it. And, yes, it's all on my computer, but that's not nearly as portable. The computer can't entertain me on the train.

Fuck thieves. I hope that they die very painful deaths. They took the very gifts that I cherished most for their meaning. They stole the sentimental stuff. I know that I could be pragmatic about it, but this time, I choose not to be. FUCKERS.

That is all.

best bio ever....

D. is delighted to be working with Signal Ensemble once again. Past Signal credits include props design for She Stoops to Conquer and stage management for Seascape. Costume Design credits include A Devil Inside with the Right Brain Project, here in Chicago; Little Shop of Horrors, The Baker's Wife, and Playing for Time, with Stagedoor Manor, in New York; Duplex with Alarm Clock Theatre Company, in Boston; and Big River with Weathervane Repertory Theatre, in New Hampshire. Since moving to Chicago, D. has worked as a costumer with Chicago Opera Theatre, Northlight Theatre, and ASMed Theater Wit's critically acclaimed Two for the Show. Love to Bil, Pepe, Penny, and also especially Taylor.


That is all.

Fucking bigotry

The Highlights of Chief Justice Judith Kaye's dissent (you can click the title of this post to read the article if you have no idea to what I am referring):

"Plaintiffs (including petitioners) are 44 same-sex couples who wish to marry. They include a doctor, a police officer, a public school teacher, a nurse, an artist and a State legislator. Ranging in age from under 30 to 68, plaintiffs reflect a diversity of races, religions and ethnicities. They come from upstate and down, from rural, urban and suburban settings. Many have been together in committed relationships for decades, and many are raising children--from toddlers to teenagers. Many are active in their communities, serving on their local school board, for example, or their cooperative apartment building board. In short, plaintiffs represent a cross-section of New Yorkers who want only to live full lives, raise their children, better their communities and be good neighbors.
"For most of us, leading a full life includes establishing a family. Indeed, most New Yorkers can look back on, or forward to, their wedding as among the most significant events of their lives. They, like plaintiffs, grew up hoping to find that one person with whom they would share their future, eager to express their mutual lifetime pledge through civil marriage. Solely because of their sexual orientation, however--that is, because of who they love--plaintiffs are denied the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage. This State has a proud tradition of affording equal rights to all New Yorkers. Sadly, the Court today retreats from that proud tradition" (1-2).

"The long duration of a constitutional wrong cannot justify its perpetuation, no matter how strongly tradition or public sentiment might support it" (10).

"Correctly framed, the question before us is not whether the marriage statutes properly benefit those they are intended to benefit--any discriminatory classification does that--but whether there exists any legitimate basis for excluding those who are not covered by the law" (11).

"The purported 'right' of gays and lesbians to enter into marriages with different-sex partners to whom they have no innate attraction cannot possibly cure the constitutional violation actually at issue here" (15).

"There are enough marriage licenses to go around for everyone. Plainly, the ability or desire to procreate is not a prerequisite for marriage. The elderly are permitted to marry, and many same-sex couples do indeed have children. Thus, the statutory classification here--which prohibits only same-sex couples, and no one else, from marrying--is so grossly underinclusive and overinclusive as to make the asserted
rationale in promoting procreation 'impossible to credit' (Romer, 517 US at 635).4 Indeed, even the Lawrence dissenters observed that 'encouragement of procreation' could not 'possibly' be a justification for denying marriage to gay and lesbian couples, 'since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry'... [N]o one
rationally decides to have children because gays and lesbians are excluded from marriage" (19-20).

"The State plainly has a legitimate interest in the welfare of children, but excluding same-sex couples from marriage in no way furthers this interest. In fact, it undermines it" (21).

"The government cannot legitimately justify discrimination against one group of persons as a mere desire to preference another group" (23).

"To say that discrimination is "traditional" is to say only that the discrimination has existed for a long time. A classification, however, cannot be maintained merely 'for its own sake' (24).

"The State asserts an interest in maintaining uniformity with the marriage laws of other states. But our marriage laws currently are not uniform with those of other states. For example, New York--unlike most other states in the nation--permits first cousins to marry" (25).

"Finally, and most fundamentally, to justify the exclusion of gay men and lesbians from civil marriage because 'others do it too' is no more a justification for the discriminatory classification than the contention that the discrimination is rational because it has existed for a long time. As history has well taught us, separate is inherently unequal" (26).

"It is uniquely the function of the Judicial Branch to safeguard individual liberties guaranteed by the New York State Constitution, and to order redress for their violation. The Court's duty to protect constitutional rights is an imperative of the separation of powers, not its enemy.
"I am confident that future generations will look back on today's decision as an unfortunate misstep" (27).

Should you wish to read the entire decision (and it certainly is illuminating), you can find it here.

It is indeed a sad day for liberty and freedom for all in this country.

Should you wish to read an excellent and titillating interview with Taylor Hicks, you can find it here.

That, my friends, is all.

...

And as he lay dying, his heart---two sizes too small---giving out, I hear that Ken Lay actually managed to stick his middle finger out toward the masses from the top of the world, out there in Aspen.
"Guilty?! Sentencing in October?!" he cried, his maniacal laughter ringing out over the great expanse of the ski resort, the mountains, Colorado, and the country at large, from sea to shining sea.
"Fuck you! The people be damned!"

The minions in the land below heard the great rumbling laughter, the hatred in his voice, and shook their heads, for they knew what had happened. People from Maine to Florida, California to Washington, Hawai'i and Alaska, Puerto Rico (and Guam too), raised their heads as one and sighed a collective sigh. The bastard got away.

And then he died, the fucking fuck. Where is the justice in that?

That is all.

Gay TV Makes Me Sad

So, I was watching Logo---because I was avoiding packing---and Harvey Feirstein was answering letters from viewers on In the Life. And he got a postcard from an 83-year old gay man who fought in WWII, in the Navy.
But here's what made me sad: the veteran who wrote the postcard put it in an envelope after stamping and addressing it, and wrote on the envelope that even now, he lives in fear.

This totally broke my heart. I don't know what more to say.

And, because it's not really a post without it.

That is all.

Well...hmm.

So Bil just sent the following e-mail to Rob at http://www.cockeyed.com.

Dearest Rob,

My name is Bil -- long-time listener, first-time beggar. My wife and I are big fans, some of the biggest in the world (I am very big at 5'9", and she is enormous at 5'2"). We have a humble request, O Great Rob, but first I must elaborate.

I am running the Honolulu Marathon for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago (we live in Chicago, you see), and I have agreed to raise $3,400 for the charity. Unfortunately, if I do not raise the money, my wife will be forced to kill me. She is small, but she is fierce -- make no mistake. This would leave us both in a pickle, because the last thing I want to be is dead, and she would be stuck paying all of the rent.

Anyway, the AIDS Marathon Training Program has given me a small chunk of land upon which to build a pre-designed website. It's right here:

http://www.aidsmarathon.com/participant.asp?runner=CH-4173&Year=2006&EventCode=HN06

(You can get here by going to www.aidsmarathon.com, clicking on "Sponsor A Runner," then Chicago, then typing in either my runner number, 4173, or my name, William Gaines.)

We are starving artists trying to make a difference. Good, sweet Rob, if your readers knew about this website, surely somebody would donate a few dollars towards the cause of helping AIDS victims. Would you be interested in helping us out by linking to my site? We figure if one hundred people donate one dollar, that's one hundred dollars! And if 3,400 people donate one dollar, I live to run the marathon.

I, of course, would be extremely grateful. I would love to offer some kind of cash reward, but it's plain to see we have no money. I would offer one of my toes, but I need them to run the marathon. What I can offer is this: as I cross the finish line, I will cluck like a chicken and flash the universal hand sign for "Rock and Roll" before collapsing from exhaustion. Or, if you prefer, I will write "Cockeyed.com" across the ass of my running shorts and run the marathon advertising your escapades -- FOR 26.2 MILES.

Anyway, please let me know what you think. We'd love to hear back from you, even if you think we are crazy. Take it easy now!

Most sincerely,

Bil Gaines & his intimidating, diminutive wife, Devon

P.S. For additional suck-uppage, I thought I should mention: my grandparents live in the Sacramento area. I have many fond memories of that town.

Should we recieve a response, you, two readers, will be the first to hear (read?) about it. And I'll be able to say, "Remember, you heard (read?) it here first!"

Also, (Bil would like me to add) should you want to donate a dollar (or more?!) to Bil's fund, please proceed directly to the following site.

Also, you can read all about his exciting running exploits (including this week's story of how he had to pee for 6 miles) at his running blog located at http://www.myspace.com/runningfordough


Additionally, and somewhat more troubling, there is a mysterious song on my computer called "All the Photographs" by a band called Sea and Cake. I have no idea where it came from, and neither does Bil, and my computer says that it's been here on my laptop since the 13th of December 2003 at 8:10 pm. Curiouser and curiouser...

And now, my favorite part of the post: Taylor Hicks' Childhood Crush Responds to People Article
Sigh.

That is all.

Misstate:

Pronunciation: "mis-'stAt
Function: transitive verb
: to state incorrectly

i.e.:


Also, in my last post, I erroneously left something out: the latest Taylor Hicks link!

And the link for this entry?

Right here!

That is all.

\/!@6R@

Normally, I don't advocate Fearless Leader's headlines-only approach to the news, but sometimes, a headline is all you need.
Case in point:
Limbaugh Held for Having Unprescribed Viagra.

Even Bob Dole can get a prescription for Viagra...

That is all.

And the #1 Reason to Just Say No! To Stagedoor:

I can't get a good martini in the Catskills to save my life!

So, I'm staying here, in Chicago. Facing unemployment FOR LIFE!!!
Because I am burning CDs right now for Bil's dad for Father's day, my computer is on a 3 second delay from when I type to when I see it appear on the screeen. So, I can't deal with blogging right now.... Gah!!! And that's why "screeen" has 3 e's above. So now you know what I am dealing with.

And because I cannot blog without him, here's the Taylor link of the day... click here -- it's a really good one...

That is all.

HELP!!!!!

Okay, readers, HELP! Please weigh in: I just got a job offer 2 months, $1800, in upstate New York, a place I may have worked before... Here's the dilemma:
Last summer, when I worked there, I did it for several reasons: 1)Money, 2)Escape from the Gap, 3)Escape insane roommates, 4)Work in theatre for $$$, 5)Hang out with the loverly Kimberly. It was 6 weeks, designing 4 shows and there was much insanity to be had. And let's not remind me because it was fucking crazy.
Chris (guy in charge of hiring) called me last night to see if I would be interested in coming up again this summer to stitch for them. No crazy directors to deal with, no designing, just kickin' back and stitching.

BUT

Here are the reasons why I need to stay home in Chi-town:

• Have to move very soon, but just across town at most, not across country


• Have to help Bil raise funds for the AIDS foundation of Chicago($3400!!!)


• Want to spend summer recouperating from exhausting year


• Want to enjoy summer evenings in a real city, not Loch Sheldrake, Bumfuck, New York


• Greater danger of tornadoes in Loch Sheldrake.


• No free lattes in Loch Sheldrake


• Have to deal with out-of-state taxes nonesense once again (3rd year in a row!)


• 2 words: STAGE KIDS


• Have to leave kitties behind

And here are the pros to those cons:

• Steady work for 8 weeks


• No temping/unemployemnt


• Get to hang out with Hannah, Todd and Carrisa


• Steady work for 8 weeks


• No dealing with directors this time around


• Have to leave kitties behind

Help me, please dear readers, I have bought myself some time -- I have to call Chris back tomorrow or the next day with an answer. Yikes!!!!!!! Please tell me what I need to hear...or read... whatever.

That is all......except for this.

That really is all.

Ann Coulter Gets Bitch-Slapped By Keith Olbermann

Seriously, this is a beautiful thing. And she's seriously uncorked. I still wish she had been a blowjob, but I digress.



Enjoy.

That is all.

My inner monologue could kick your inner monologue's ass!

I have these moments when I totally crack myself up.

For instance:
The battery on my cell phone doesn't stay attached anymore. I need a new one, but until I get around to it, the battery is held on by a rubber band. (Which doesn't always work so well, so incidentally, this is why I accidentally hang up on people all the time.)
So, I get out of work yesterday and I get in my car and turn on said sad cell phone so I can call Bil and tell him I'm on the way home before hanging up on him unintentionally. I should also inform you, dated readers, that my cell phone is 3 years old. I could have gotten a new one years ago, but why bother? I like my phone (except for the hanging up part...although that does have its uses.) My phone takes a while to turn on, so I set it in my lap and start driving home from Skokie, singing along with my favorite Idol's b-side. The music goes into an instrumental bit and I started talking to myself (something I do all too frequently in my car: I tell myself stories about how I "accidentally" ran into some famous person or another and they instantly fall in love with me despite my bad hair/crooked teeth/crappy skin/crooked eyes, etc., or I discuss with myself the merits of one performer over another, or I come up with really good retorts to bitchy things people have said to me--you get the idea). So I'm discussing--with myself--how I liked George Huff's American Idol cover way better than the bits of his gospel album that he later released. Out loud. Alone. In my car. Not entirely cognizant of the fact that this is slightly crazy. And I look down in my lap and see that not only is my phone now on, but that it's recording all of this as a voice memo.
Here, I'll replicate the transcript:
ME: Badly singing...."You will find him everywhere. Wherever people live together, tied in poverty and despair. . . --ing it to the streets. Taking it...taking it... Really bad growl
Talking now, over the music Yeah, I definitely think George Huff's better as an over-produced pop singer than as a less-than-throaty totally-unsexy gospel singer... Oh my God I'm recording thi-----!"
So, I erased it. Because there are so many things wrong with that voice memo. But it definitely cracked me up. So then I was a person sitting at a red light, laughing for no visible reason in my car, and telling myself all about how I totally embarrassed myself IN FRONT OF NO ONE.
Sanity's totally overrated.

That is all.

And now I have to pee.
That is all.

Is it morally reprehensible ...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Of Moving and Marathons (and a tryst????)

Found out a week ago that Bil and I have to move. Again. Because Sam Odisho, our landlord, wants to make our apartment building into condominiums. But he'll give us a good deal if we want to buy. To quote Clueless "As if!" I have lived in 5 states since June of '04 (California, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and Illinois) and I am fucking tired of moving. Thankfully, this will be, at most, an across-town move, not an across-country move, but regardless I am a cross girl moving. I guess I won't be finishing my dining room after all. Alas.
Also, in breaking news, now, Bil is just not jealous. I keep trying to incite jealousy and, yes, perhaps a little rage in the man, but all efforts have fallen flat. I have told him that come hell or high water, I will have a secret rendezvous with an older man (preferably a gray-haired soul singer with bad dance moves), but to no avail. He just blinks at me and goes to sleep. Maybe he's having secret rendezvous(es) (what is the plural of "rendezvous"?) with benevolent gray-haired soul singers with bad moves also? Dare I suspect a tryst? In reality, no. Aside from the moving debacle, there is very little drama in our personal lives. (How can there be much drama when one sees one's husband for 1/2 an hour every day?) And back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Alas. Bil is running a marathon. For the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. A brief tangent: the fact that AIDS is an acronym means that it is permanently capitalized, and therefore scarier than, say, cancer. Also the fact that it's un-curable. But the capitalization of a word that, when not used in the scary low/no-T-cells-STD type of manner, means "to give assistance" is somehow very sad to me. /Endtangent. Therefore, let's aid Bil's efforts to raise money and awareness for research and education about AIDS. Be forewarned, you will be getting a desperate plea from both myself and Bil to make donations to this cause. He's running in 6 months and 2 days...in Hawai'i.
In other news that's not really news, I still hate the Republicans and their fear- and hate-mongering tactics. And, yes I know this is hypocritical to hate them for hate-mongering. I do not understand how my family can continue to support such a party and still claim to be moral and just human beings. I'm not going to start another half-assed rant here about how destructive they are and how they are hammering a giant-ass wedge into the middle of the people("A house divided against itself...") and how we are a country of inclusion by nature and yet we are allowing these bastards to attempt to exclude certain groups from basic inalienable rights, and "...give me your tired, you poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." and all of that. Instead, I'm hunkering down and watching Lewis Black say it all better than I could in his newest special "Red, White and Screwed" on Saturday night. Respectfully, fuck you, Mr. President. And fuck you, Rove, and Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft, and Cheney and all of your fucking cronies. Fuck you. Because you are the exact things that we as Americans are against. Free country indeed.
We will never be free until... what? I googled this quote and here are the answers:
We will never be free until...

• "...each and every American is guaranteed the right to vote in a reasonable time frame..."
  
• "...we are free of that kind of control that limits our ability to state exactly what we think and what we feel."
  
• "... we heal and forgive."
  
• "... we are independent of France."
  
• " we can park our individual beliefs to tackle the greater challenge of what is good for society and others, and supplant our own..."
  
• "...we own our bodies."
  
• "...the intellectuals--the natural molders of public opinions--have been converted to the side of ..."
  
• "...we stop it."
  
• "...we learn to share with others."
  
• "...our brothers and sisters, until our forgotten American allies in the jungles of Laos are free."
  
• "...the world is ruled by Islamic Law!"
  
• "...We Focus on Building Wealth"
  
• "...we can fuck like dogs in the street..."
  
• "...we accept the responsibility that has been given us in dealing with souls..."
  
• "...the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest..."
  
• "...Palestine and Palestinians are free."
  
• "...the victims of that wealth are treated to freedom and justice."
  
• "...the govt falls..."
  
• "...we have the right to urinate in a total stranger's face at our favorite restaurant."
  

An interesting cross-section of beliefs on freedom. Pepe says that he will never be truly free until he can get as much love and attention as is possible from me, but only when he asks for it. I tried to explain about dependence and co-dependence and how that's not real freedom, but I don't think he heard me over the noise of purring.
I am scattered today...
That is all.

Can't seem to make this fit into my page nicely....

... so I'll post it instead. Ha.
I bring you songs that make me think of smoky bars and being up at 5:30 am for no fucking reason at all. Did I accomplish all the things I wanted to today? No. And now I have even more to do when I wake up way too late in the afternoon. Gah.

Get your own Flash MP3 Player

That is all.

Oh, communication....

So, I'm working on a costume design right now for a play called A Devil Inside. The play's ok, weird and gorey, but I don't really care about the content. I'm just trying to create some costumes for it. I took the job rather later in the action, and after discussing it with the director felt like I had a pretty good handle on things. It's a really young company, and its members are likewise youthful.
(For example, I mentioned something about all my time being eaten up at the opera lately offhandedly, and the props girl asked me what I was doing there. I told her I was dressing two operas for them, and she replied, "Oh. So, do you get paid for that?" I said, "No. I just really love helping demanding and sweaty dancers and singers into and out of costumes they should be able to handle themselves. And I *love* doing laundry all day long 5 floors underground when it's nice outside. I also really get a kick out of turning sweaty socks, hanging up people's costumes for them and gouging out my own eyes!" But what I really said was simply, "Um, yeah, it's pretty lucrative.")
Here's the thing about this show: when I talked to the director about it, he says (I know -- I wrote it down) he wants it to feel really '70's. I say, I can do that. He says he wants to simplify: 1 costume per actor. I can do that. And we can't afford to pay you quite what you are asking (not that high a price: out of the 49 shows curently gracing my resume, I have designed costumes for 11, most of which were post-college).
A month later, I get an e-mail from a person I'm assuming is the stage manager asking for agenda bullets for that evening's production meeting. I didn't even know that there was a production meeting and I certainly don't know who this person is who is sending me the e-mail. Oh, communication. I respond that I can't make it that night, and that I'd love some notice in the future when production meetings are scheduled. I say it nicely, though.
A household emergency and my own procrastination and crazy opera tech schedule ended up with my doing a very quick sketch for the costumes that I brought to my first production meeting. I explain to Director that I have a leak in my kitchen and my linoleum is floating. He lets me go first at the meeting because, "This is Devon, our costume designer. She's going to go first at this meeting because she's got a flood in her basement." Oh, communication. I show my crappy last-minute rendering around in all of its seventies glory, and explain the concept and palette, apologizing for the crappiness of the rendering. Director says, "Ok, well, maybe less bell bottoms. They're really big."
"Sure," I respond. I can do that. It's less stereotypically "seventies", but we can move it a little later in the seventies and the flare will calm down a bit. It takes almost an hour to discern a window in which I can get measurements, but finally, he says he'll call the actors in a bit earlier to rehearsal one night and we can measure. Grand.
Skip ahead to the next week's production meeting. I have started to make purchases for the show out of my pocket because Director has not responded to my e-mails requesting petty cash. I have clarified my design concept a bit, and I'm feeling good; it's now Monday and I have fittings on either Tuesday or Wednesday, but Director can't be pinned down.
I finally decide that we will do them on Tuesday, because I just want to get out of there. And then I talk about some fabric I have purchased that is perfect for the period.
"Period? D. I'm a little concerned when you say period and with that drawing that you showed us last week."
"Oh?"
"When you are talking about period, this is modern times. It's got some pieces that could be older, but it's today."
Well, fuck me. I was told that it was supposed to be period. I have communicated that in multiple conversations with Director, and now he has selective memory. And I have been rendered impotent in front of the room of other designers.
"Well," I say, "it's retro then."
And this is how the whole process has continued. Director has micromanaged my FITTINGS, for fuck's sake. He looks at a pair of seersucker pants from a foot away and says he doesn't like the stripes (that I've dyed way down). I tell him, "Yes, well, you're much closer than any audience member ever will be to those pants. I'm not designing for people in the cast -- it's for the audience." He goes into the house and looks at the pants. "Maybe a little darker then, with those."
"Fine," I say, writing it down with the litany of other bullshit notes he's given me, "and hem down 1.5 inches."
"Oh, good," he says, "I was going to mention that his pants are kinda short."
"That's because I just added suspenders to them and now they are at his waist."
I am so glad that I have a director who fancies himself an expert costumer. And I'm so glad that I get to do the special effects with the blood that gets everywhere because obviously that's a costume thing. And I couldn't be happier that Director forgot to mention that he actually wants another cosutme added last minute: a onesie-style pajama for a fully-frown man, because I actually can shit those out at will. And I'm so glad that I'm getting paid 175 dollars for this. And that I'm currently scheduled to work with Director again in just a couple of short months. I have got to get out of that. Because I am worth more than this bullshit. And I can't work with people who cannot communicate.
I have ranted via computer for over an hour and I'm still angry.... I have never wanted a show to end more than this one. I really am sick of it. And I'm not even in tech yet. (Thank God I'll only be able to be there for one tech/dress rehearsal because of my other, more lucrative dressing job in Skokie).
/endrant

On a high note, I have a new crush, and, as always, it's highly embarrassing.

Turn up your volume if it's not up and check it out. Thanks to NPR's Tapestry program in Birmingham, Alabama for unknowingly loaning me that audio clip.
<BGSOUND src="">

That is all.

Oh the wonder of cable

I hate to admit it, but I really love my cable TV. Mostly because I get TLC and Comedy Central. Especially Comedy Central. Specifically The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. I have a bit of a crush on that crazy Lincolnish Megamerican who brought us the word "Truthiness." Sigh. And this is why:

Sigh. I love that pundit man....

Thank you Stephen Colbert, thank you!

That is all.

No money in my couch...

but Trevor did find the following items in my couch:

• 1 Swiss Army knife I lost in October


• 3 pens


• 1 receipt from September '05


• 2 remote controls (lost over a month ago)


• a month-old bank receipt


• a brand new lighter

I often dig in my couch and come up with nothing... but every time Trevo reaches in to the magic couch, he finds treasure... maybe he'll drag up an old boot next time...???

That is all.

Look at that clock!

Can you see it? It says that we have 999 days until president # 44 is sworn into office. I can almost smell 12:00pm EST on January 20th, 2009. We are in triple digits!!!!

That is all.

I'll Never Let the Dentist Give Me Fluoride Again

So I've got quite the project right now. I'm stripping. And it's really hard work -- I'm actually working up a decent sweat. And I seriously will have better guns than Bil when I'm done. It's tough finding the right clothes in my closet though -- I don't want to use anything too nice.
Because the chemical furniture stipper that I'm using (get your minds out of the gutter, readers, I'm stripping chairs not me!) is really scary. It's this bright orange gel that smells exactly like the fluoride that the dentist used to put on my teeth after she cleaned them when I was a child. Therefore I hate this stipper. It's vile, but it works pretty well thus far. My goal is to get all this done in the next couple of days while I'm between jobs. (I will be unemployed for all of three days.)

My show Two for the Show, the one that is plagued by a certain dead Scottish thane, is finally closing tonight. I'm sad to see it go. I really like working with the cast and crew -- they are a lot of fun. On the other hand, my short attention span is looking forward to the next big challenge. The opera. Yikes. I'm kinda scared: it's been a while since I've started a new job. I do know a couple of people with whom I'll be working: one of the ASMs lives across the street from me and one of the dressers designed the costumes for Seascape and She Stoops to Conquer. Still, two operas in one month. By the time I learn one, I'll be starting the next. Alas. I gotta be sure to bring a note pad. But when May's done, I have a whole week of freedom before the next contract kicks in. And then I'm on an 8-shows/week schedule. (And a really happy paycheck.)

I was so worried when I moved here that it would be like Boston; that I wouldn't be able to find work because of a day job schedule, or that I wouldn't be able to find work period. But I have only had a little downtime since I got here. And it's really exciting. And opera and AEA shows are fairly lucrative. And that is really happy. I didn't expect to like Chicago, but it's growing on me. But I still don't like the dentist and her fluoride.

That is all.

How dumb do I feel?

So it turns out that I have been moderating my comments for several months. And I forgot. So I thought that I hadn't been getting any comments. :( But, all sorts of lovely people apparently read my blog! YAY! So, thank you to all of my lovely readers! I thought no one read this silly old blog o' mine. So here are kisses and hugs to all of you who read this!

• Thank you for stalking me, Helen (I totally stalk you too!). And remember that the Midwest is actually surprisingly cool -- I really liked Iowa City when we drove through it.


• And thanks for commenting and coming to stay with us, Ben!


• And thanks to Kimberly for all of the lovely comments that I just read -- I will try to call you this week (you tagged me -- it's my turn to respond).


• And thank you to my ridiculous husband who really does look good in a dress.

I love you all! And miss you all!

That is all.

HAHAHA

Daily Show Senior War Correspondent Dan Bakkedahl just referred to Donald Rumsfeld as a dick. Hahahahaha!

That is all.

"Ahh, married life..."

...I thought, as I used a staple gun to finish re-upholstering a chair seat for my dining room, and my husband talked on the phone to his best friend about recent boy troubles. Tell me this: who wears pants in this one???

That is all.

What the fuck?!

So I'm flipping thru the channels and I land on Discovery Home, which I *love*. And I see the beginning of the show Garden Police. They are driving through an area that looks very much like the Valley. And they are talking about this family whose lawn they are going to redo. This family the Flukers. And I'm not really into gardening as I don't currently have a garden. So I'm flipping thru the guide to see what else is on, until I hear them say, "Fluke Fluker?! Yes, that really is his name!" And I really look at the family who owns this sad garden,and it's totally the guy who taught PE and Urban Survival Skills at my little suburbia Middle School in So Cal. He has a really cute family and now a really nice garden. I never had Fluke as a teacher. . . mostly because I was a band geek and so not into surviving the urban scene. . . but he was the most popular teacher at LCMS because he was really hip. Also, I remember him being about 7 feet tall. No joke. And now he's playing B-ball with the Garden Police. No fuckin' way, dude. I'm in a time warp... jesus.

That is all.

The manner in which one lie begets another...

I haven't really lied much since I was about 16 years old. I mean I kept things to myself, when the occasion presented itself, but I haven't actually told too many untruths in the last 8 or so years. So how the hell did I manage to weave such a web of deceit in the past 96 hours? Frighteningly enough, I think that it was instinct. Sheesh.

The lie that started it all is almost not related but that it put me in the right place coincidentally. It all started Friday at around 1:30pm. I get a call that half of the cast is sick and we have doubled up on understudies, so we are canceling the show for the evening. I decide that it would be fun to surprise Bil and go see his show because it's my only opportunity, and it'll be fun.

Lie #1

Bil calls, we talk, I tell him I'm on the way out the door to go shopping -- Old Navy had some cute cargo pants I want. I tell him I have to hurry so that I can get down the the theatre on time.

Truth

I was still in my pjs at 2 in the afternoon. The show had already been cancelled.

So I slowly get dressed, finish some replacement prop letters for his show, and then dawdle about some more. Then I leave to go shopping. At 5:30.

Lie #2

Bil calls again, wants to know if I've already dropped the props by his theatre and if I had any cargo-pant success at Old Navy. I tell him I'm already on my way to my show, that there were no cargo pants in my size (sad) and that the new props are already there.

Truth

I was on my way up to Old Navy at this point. I had only just left the house.

For the record, Old Navy really didn't have the pants I wanted in my size. So that turned out to be true...

After Old Navy, I went to see his show, and while I was waiting for him to come out from the backstage area, I start talking to a guy I'll call "Dave" (his real name), whom I had previously met at a bar. We chat, and he says, "Hey, do you drink alcohol?" I tell him I do if he's buying. He says he works for a marketing firm and they are doing market research about drinking habits. I get $75 in cash for talking about booze. I tell him I'm there!
Then he says to me, "Now, they don't like using people in this field, because they think we're different or weird or 'abnormal.' So, we'll have to figure out another profession for you."
He tells me to think about it and to call him tomorrow.

I surprise Bil and everything is hunky-dory.
Fast-forward to the next day.
Saturday.


I call "Dave" and we decide that I will be a legal secretary. I will have to dress the part. Then he asks me a bunch of questions: drinking habits, social habits, and age. I don't lie much but...

Lie #3

I tell him that I'm 25. I don't quite know why I did this. I don't like when people hear that I'm married and young -- they always seem to judge me. I guess that would be the reason... Not really sure, though.

Truth

I am 24 years old and will be until further notice (or the 23rd of September, whichever comes first).

He asks for my e-mail address so that he can send me confirmation of my appointment in the focus group.

Fast-forward to this morning.
I get up and check my e-mail. There it is: the e-mail from "Dave."

"Thank you for agreeing to join us for this market research focus group.
Date & – Monday April 10, 2006
Time 3:45 pm to 5:30 pm
Incentive - $75.00 cash

Please remember to bring a photo I.D. Your participation is very important to us. If you must cancel please contact our office as soon as possible so we may have opportunity to replace you, 312-xxx-xxxx. Please do not send anyone in your place.

This study is for research purposes ONLY and is not a solicitation for business or an attempt to sell you anything. Your opinions will be kept strictly confidential and no personal information, nor proprietary information on your company will be collected."

I call the offices to confirm that I am indeed going to be there. They ask me if I have any friends that I might know who would also be interested in participating, as they have had a few people unable to make it. I ask if there are any requirements, and they tell me that they must be ages 25-39. I tell them I'll pass on the information.

So, now my little white lie about my age is coming back to bite me in the ass. Shit. I panic about it for a bit and then call them back.

Lie #4

I talk to someone in the office and tell him that I've misplaced my driver's license and say that I've got a student ID. Will that work?

Truth

I am looking at my driver's license as I call him.

Lie #5

He tells me that I can use a student ID as long as it has a date of birth on it. I say, "Well, let me look at mine. Oh, yes. It does!"

Truth

I know for a fact that it does not have a date of birth on it.

I panic when I get off of the phone. Why didn't I just tell him that I did not have a DOB on my student ID? Shit, shit, shit!

I make a snap decision. I will photoshop a DOB onto my student ID. But I need light magenta ink or my printer won't scan or print. I run out to Staples to get some. I figure that maybe I can fabricate a student ID that might be a bit like a blockbuster card with a clear plasic sheet, and some good prints.

I get it all printed up and it looks pretty good. I photoshopped the magnetic strip off of the back and replace it with a bar code and the serial number from the front. I take some clear acrylic gloss varnish and glue front to back and slip it carefully into the plastic sheeting. I take an embossing gun and try to gently heat the plastic to get it to stick together. And the plastic starts shrinking and curling up. Abort!

I take one last stab at getting the thing to work. I take some more clear acrylic varnish and adhere the plastic right to the "ID". It bubbles a bit, so I smooth it out and it looks pretty good. Until it starts curling up. I panic. . . which brings me to

Lie #6

I call "Dave's" company back. I tell them that I must have eaten something funny because I think that I might have food poisoning. I don't think that I can make it to the appointment. And I'm really sorry.

Truth

I have not actually eaten anything at all today. Therefore, no food poisoning, just hunger. On the other hand, I actually am really sorry. Goodbye, $75.

I wish that I could say that I was lying to you all, two readers, but alas, this is the truth.

That is all.

This seemed oddly appropriate.....

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Bil tells me that I am ridiculous for writing about the farting thing. Sorry, two readers, that you must put up with such shenanigans.

ENOUGH!
That is all.

I totally just farted when I was writing that last post.

Seriously,
That is all!

Bil said not to publish the last one. Because I wanted it to be funny, and it somehow wasn't.
Ahhh, fuck it. No one reads this crap anyway. Except you, two dear readers. . . I know you must be out there... right??
Cheese,
D.


That is really all.

Baaaaaaa---

Baa Baa Black Sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir,
Yes, sir,
Three bags full.

One for the Master,
One for the Dame,
One for the little boy who lives down the lane.

I am so the black sheep in my fam..... How did I come from such right-wing, Republican, Christian people???
I am a hard-core leftist.
I am a staunch Democrat.
I am not not not a Christian, nor do I aspire to be so.
I am just a transient artist with untreated depression. How the hell did I get here?

That is all.

That Damned Scottish Thane Turned King

I have never been particularly superstitious in my life. If a black cat crosses my path, I usually try to pet it; if I walk under a ladder, I make sure I don't knock anyone off of it; if I break a mirror, I sigh, throw it away, and get a new one. But I am starting to be suspicious about this Macb*** word and its use in the theatre. You know the word. It's the title of Shakespeare's shortest and most bloody play, the one about that Thane of Glamis and Cawdor and King after that. The one that takes place in Scotland. With the witches. And the ghosts. And a little boy called Fleance. Am I ringing any bells?
So in Two for the Show, the musical on which I am currently working, one character spitefully says to another "Macb---" ok. Can't type it. But he says it 4 times. And I swear, it's affecting the show. How else can you explain the extreme misfortune that is overshadowing the entire cast and crew? Let's look at the list, shall we?

• 1st choreographer: stuck in hospital with kidney stones, in BOSTON. Had to drop the show.
  
• 1st musical director: ill with some sort of continuing ailment that required extensive treatment. Had to drop show.
  
• Co-writer/originally going to play one of the leads: father died, sick cat, can't even afford to get back out to Chicago to see the show.
  
• Leading lady: car accident (hit and run) and grandfather in hospital w/ heart attack all within 2 days' time.
  
• Spot op#1: Missed a performance because --I shit you not-- he was in jail.
  
• Spot Op#2: had a friend unexpectedly die.
  
• SM: had a family member die.
  
• ASM (me): had to go to MN to help with sick grandfather.
  
• 1st Dresser: couldn't make it to all performances, fired. Replacement is Scottish husband of Costume Designer.
  
• 2 shows have now had to be cancelled: the first was due to a lack of a paying audience. 8 people paid, 1 comp. The only one to show up? The comp. And tonight's show has been cancelled due to an epidemic within the cast. One actor has a very nasty flu, and the other is losing his voice, and our leading lady is on vocal rest. And we only have one understudy for both of the male leads.
  
• And the set is falling apart.
  
• And so many other things that I have forgotten in the past 2 months that all of this has been going on.

I keep spinning and spitting, but I keep wondering what could possibly be next...? If this is affecting you, I'm really sorry. Sheesh. I'm holing myself up in my apartment and not coming out 'til the 22nd.

That is all.

Got this from Danielle...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

"And what was to prove most irritating of all, there was no way whereby officials in St. Petersburg could forewarn their officials in far-distant Siberia that this gang of men was about to descend upon them with requirements that simply could not be filled locally." -- Alaska by James A. Michener

Mmmmm...

Recently, while in Minnesota with my mother, I discovered my new favorite artist: Dale Chihuly. Seriously. I love his glass art. These colorful, translucent organic pieces of glass are fantastic. There's such a whimsical quality to this stuff. It's totally alluring to me. A lot of his stuff deals with water, which made me think about how much I miss the ocean. It's been 5 1/2 months since I've seen the ocean. I can't remember ever spending so much time away from it.
I drove North along Lake Michigan Sunday afternoon. The weather was really nice (this means it was in the 50's), so naturally, I had all of the windows rolled down and the sunroof rolled back so I could enjoy some fresh air after being cooped up inside all winter. It was really nice to drive along the lake, and it was breezy, so there were some waves rolling to the shore...but it's not the ocean. For one thing, it smells all wrong. And the air doesn't feel briny, doesn't curl my hair. It's all wrong. There's no salty seaweed smell. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can actually smell the ocean... but not on Sunday. Not the lake. Sigh. It's just not the same. And it's not just any ocean that I miss. It's the Pacific. It's wild and beautiful and untamed and free...

Oh, god... I'm just rambling and missing my homeland and my ocean and those gray June mornings in Southern CA before the marine layer burns off, and the sand is damp as the sun is rising and lighting the world in a lavender glow... Tired and in a weird place, but what's new? Screw grammar. Right? Whatever. I need to go to bed. And when I do, I'll be dreaming in reflections of amorphous, translucent, glowing abstractions and Carpinteria Beach. And I'll be happy. What more could a girl ask for?

.lla si tahTThat is all.

On Rochester, Minnesota

Ok, so Rochester, MN is a sleepy little town with residents who have funny accents and say "Ya know" awkwardly. It also is home to a giant medical clinic and a TINY LITTLE SPECK of an "international" airport. But that stupid little airport does have one thing going for it: free wireless internet. Score. I can read Dear Abby while waiting for my flight back down to the civilized world. Am beginning to wonder if am like one of those Manhattanites who never leave the city---and when they do, they feel as if they have left all of civilization behind. God, I miss the city. And Bil. It's been an interesting time -- my grandfather (who all of the grandkids affectiontely call "Dandy") has been going through a battery of tests, and we're hoping tomorrow's Dr. appointment my shed some light on why he's been getting so dizzy. It's tough. He's old and stubborn and not very detail oriented--we've had to coerce him into giving the doctors all of the information about his symptoms. I really hope they can shed some light on this whole thing -- he's lost a lot of weight and he looks really frail. It makes me really sad. Please, two readers, send some good thoughts his way. I don't pray (I do stalk prey...) but I do send happy thoughts. Maybe it's the same thing, but it doesn't hurt my conscience this way. Gonna go read some sage advice from a sage advisor... mmmmhm....

That is all.

Grrr...

So I get an e-mail out of the blue from a director with a small off-loop theatre company here in town who was referred to me by the people who did Seascape. They told him that I was always looking for good costume design work, so he contacted me to see if I was available and interested in designing Medea in a timeless modern style for them. I send a flurry of e-mails back and forth, and as I'm at the laundromat this morning (ok, it was morning for ME... really it was about noon), I get a call from their production manager. I've heard from various theatre sources that this company is notorious for being cheap with their designers/staff, so I know I'm going to have to drive my asking price up to get a stipend that would make this worth doing, and even so, I'll probably have to find some other work to supplement the income. We do the monetary dance, and I end up driving up the price about 20% higher than he was offering -- still not a lot, but I felt decent about it. I get off the phone, and tell Bil all about it, rather excitedly.
And then I get a call back from the production manager. He says that they made a bit of a mistake... that there had been some misunderstanding. He tells me that one of their company members was also offered the job and that he thought she had declined, but she had actually said, "I don't know". So they needed to wait on her because they needed to give priority to company members, yada, yada, yada.
So my question, two readers (if there are even that many), is this: if they call back and ask me to do this show, should I let bygones be bygones, or should I tell them that I've booked something in the meantime and leave them high and dry? And should I use the same cliche turns of phrase that I've just utilized? I could, in the meantime apply to the Weathervane in New Hampshire, where I worked two years ago, to be a designer for a show or two with them... grrr... I hate it when people do this. It's pretty fucked up and unprofessional and it makes them seem like they don't really have their shit together. What should I do?

in other, much more exciting news, one of the shows on which I'm currently working is now open and playing at the Theatre Building Chicago on Belmont. Very exciting. And I think I'm going to fill out the form and spend the $100 to enroll as an Equity Membership candidate, as I'm eligible for 11-12 weeks from this show.

If you are in the Chicago area between now and the 22nd of April, you must come see this show. It's pretty good. And there's always the off-chance that I might lose my headset onstage during a set change--it happened just last night, for instance. But seriously, it's funny!

And if you will be in Chicago between the 31 of March and the 29th of April, you should come check out my mad propping and scenic painting skillZ (yes, that's right skillZ with a Z -- I'm that good) on Signal Ensemble Theatre's production of She Stoops to Conquer. Also, you should see it because Bil's in it, and he's funny. Really. Additionally, you must see it so that I may live vicariously through you, oh sole-reader-who-is-my-husband-and-therefore-cannot-see-it-because-you-are-in-it, because I cannot actually go see this show because my other show (see above) is running against it and I'm in tech for the Chicago Opera theatre the last weekend of the run. It's good to be booked, but this is ridiculous! Anywho, come see the show!
I'll link it as soon as they update their site.

That is all.

'Tis the Season

Be vewwy vewwy qwiet... I'm hunting Girl Scouts.
I need more Girl Scout Cookies... mmmmmm. Of course, I'm highly concerned about the fact that those evil Girl Scouts are contributing the obesity epidemic in America by peddling their wicked wares.
But mostly, I just want COOKIES! mmmm.....

That is all.

The real problem with the SF Giants:

Barry Bonds is an ugly, ugly woman. Apparently, he's portraying Paula Abdul... me thinks something is not quite right...?

That is all.

Holy Crap Dude

How the hell did I end up so fucking busy? I went from working nights on one show to simultaneously working on three. The good news is that I am booked pretty solid thru the end of May with Theatre and Opera work. But right now, I still am working on Seascape for 1 more week, I'm in rehearsals during the day on a new vaudeville-style show that I'm ASMing, and I'm designing props (and later I think I'm doing some scenic painting) on She Stoops to Conquer with the same company that's doing Seascape. And when Two for the Show (vaudeville show) closes, I get three days off before I start teching for the 1st of two operas I'm dressing. I just looked up the theatre where the operas are performing.... here's a pic...

Yikes!! It's fucking huge! And for Nixon in China, there will be a wardrobe crew of about 10-12 people. Christ.

Must go to bed. Rehearsal tomorrow, and then I might have to go dress a fairly complex show that I've never dressed before and have seen once. I have four pages of single spaced notes on the quick changes. I really hope I don't have to sub in -- it scares the crap out of me. I only have to do it if Carissa's plane from SC gets delayed significantly -- cross your fingers that her plane is on time.

I guess busy is better than not.... sheesh.

Also, has anyone else noticed that the Canadian Womens' Curling team is all redheads? Creepy.....

that is all.

She says:

Sometimes I wish that life was as beautiful as it seems in the movies. Even when it's sad, I love the idea of everything being so perfectly beautiful. Life is just messy in reality. Nothing is ever as it initially seems, and nothing is ever clean-cut and clear. And very little has that cinematic beauty. And nothing is perfect. Intellectually, I know this to be fact, and yet some nights, when the darkness is swallowing me up and suffocating me, I can't help but wish for movie beauty in my own life. I have a problem with depression. Always have. And some days it's worse than others. I've been in a string of less than perfect days, and it's wearing on me. And I'm taking my frustation and anger out on Bil because I really don't know how else to deal with it. And it doesn't help that I really don't like leaving the house, and he keeps trying to make me. I feel terrible about it, which just increases my initial problem, and so I'm even crabbier, and then I feel even worse, and so I get more frustrated with myself and so I snap at Bil and then I feel really awful and...... you get the idea. I wish I could get some sort of professional verification of this, someone with impressive certificates on the office wall who will tell me that it's just depression and that I'm not crazy, and that it can be fixed. I really want to be fixed. I know it's not really how it works. That I'm not some vase that has shattered and can be re-glued a little worse for the wear, but whole. God, I wish that was the case, though. Anyone have soul glue?

I just feel crappy. And it's not getting better, despite the reassurances that I've given to my parents that I am just fine and doing better. It's a lie. I can't sleep and I can't get my brain to stop buzzing, and I pretend to be happy and funny while I'm at work, but I'm not well. I'm not fine. And I'm kidding everyone and myself by pretending. Bil's going to California next weekend for his grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. I'm running a show, so I'll still be here. I wish I could go with him. I'd like to see some sunlight and maybe the Pacific Ocean. I miss those things. Being nocturnal is so not good for my mental health. I should try to get to sleep -- I do have rehearsal tomorrow and I need to not fall asleep during it. At least I only have the rehearsal and not that plus a Seascape performance at night. I am perpetually tired and sleepless. It's a pain in the ass. I promise my next post will return to what I hope is at best witty candor and worst low-brow fart jokes. At least I'm not crazy enough to start singing every snippet of Annie that I can recall... yet.


that is all, y'all