Nuthin' sparks a young gal's flint like a good flush... (Is that a Justin Timberlake track playing? And is she or is she not two cosmopolitans away from a make-out session?)
Link courtesy of Sir Yatta Mc Cheese, D.D.S.
I told myself I wouldn't post this because it's so silly, so so silly, but I find myself wanting to show people simply because of the bald inanity of it... anyway. Here's what becomes of two bored ninnies who don't feel like going outside to enjoy the last warm day of the year AND who also happen to have a short video of one of the ninnies swinging from a rope in Hawaii... And of course, iMovie. Click it, baby.
I ride my bike to work often. Because my building is a high-rise with many offices, I'm required to take my bike up to the 24th floor in the freight elevator rather than the normal passenger elevator. I ride my bike into the loading dock and right up to the elevator, then I wait for one of the workers to take me up (the elevators are hand operated). One of the workers, a chubby middle-aged Puerto Rican fellow, always looks me up and down very slowly, starting at the feet, travelling up to my neck, and back to my feet. The whole ride up. He has this mildly disgusted look on his face, but I'm never sure what it's in response to. My outfit? My height? My thin sheen of bike sweat?
And the oddest thing is, while he's doing the once-over he is singing spanish love longs very loudly at me. But without smiling, and without connecting to me, as though he's not singing them out loud at all. It's so strange. He does it to the delivery boys as well. I used to think he was a lech, but now I'm convinced he is so comfortable in the solitariness of his job that he actually believes he's invisible.
The way I avoid acknowledging the whole affair is to stare at the poster on the wall, of Michael Jordan in the early nineties making an unbelievable dunk, one of those mid-air flights toward the net. I scrutinize the faces of the spectators. All of them are seated with their mouths slightly agape, except this one woman with feathered hair and a tan blazer. Her face is filled with this screeching kind of joy, and her hair is all big and excited. It makes me giggle every time.
I rode my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge that day and listened to Bjork's Hyperballad on repeat on my iPod, over and over again, marvelling at how lucky I am. I rode very fast to the beat. It's such a heartbreaking song. Soph plays a little riff from it in my Six Nights play. The show is going so well. Everyone seems to dig it a lot. Heidi, Brooks, and Eve are so awesome. Kip did a fantastic job. I love painless theatre experiences. They are so rare for me.
So I've been feelin' kind of geeky lately because of my new gmail account, seeing as how one needs geeky friends and geeky thoughts to get one... but as a result, I've been spending WAY too much time online. Figuring out labels and archiving, playing with attachments, switching back to my dumbass hotmail account and yelling at folks to stop using it... and spending hours reading impenetrable documents about my rights to privacy. So thanks, gmail, for making me a bigger loser.
Okay, here's why sometimes I love New York... Friday night at around 1am I was sitting alone in my apartment in my jammies preparing for a three hour lecture on Elizabethian theatre and the Renaissance for my Sat. morning class, when I got a phone call from a sound designer friend. "Where the hell are you? It's Samone's last weekend as a single woman!! We're at the Frying Pan..."
Moments later, I'm rushing from the apartment in black heels and a blue boa, bachelorette party-bound. Came home at 4, did work until 5:30, slept for three hours, did more work from 8:30 to 11:30, and proceeded to move my class to tears with my rendering of Hamlet's existential dilemma. Okay, they were inward tears, but still.
On the subject of my classiness... I have just eaten an entire block of chocolate dipped in peanut butter. For dinner. I feel liberated.
Oh, I'd like to take this opportunity to request a moment of silence for my friend Jason and Lorraine's kitty-cat Murray, who passed away three days ago at the age of 7. He was a very good cat. 
(this isn't Murray by the way, but it looks an awful lot like him. I found this lesser Murray on the net.)
For those of you who, like me, have spent an entire weekend barely moving from your couch in utter squalor with your roommate and significant other in tears trying to get you to go outside for air, only to be met with a gurgling growl along the lines of, "I'm downloading balloons for a f*cking house party, leave me alone...", I suggest you DO NOT click here. It shall only hurt the ones who love you.
Last night we (a pack of playwrights and directors and actors) were touring Roosevelt Island as part of the site-specific aspect of Six Nights and I made a rather loud joke about an external catheter and no one laughed. Actually, they grimaced.
Roosevelt Island is a really strange place to walk around in the dark in the rain. It is super-clean, and kind of looks like a modern new England college campus. Lots of greenery, well-paved paths, great places to sit and ponder the east river. And all the folks living there are either UN employees or long-term hospital patients. Apparently, more than 83% the inhabitants use wheelchairs. I made that up.
Anyway, the tram ride is so excellent. I was clininging to the railing a little desperately, watching our small metal box climb higher and higher over the FDR, and the operator turned to me and said "this your first time"? I nodded, and so he began to list all the ways one could die on a tram-related accident. Apparently, he missed the MTA's "Don't Scare The Passeners" training seminar.
Remind me to tell you about my neighbor Willie at some point.
I'm such a sucker for a dive bar and a potential all-night mega-chat with pals I rarely spend time with... but oh the whiskey, it hurts, mama. Me 31-year-old gullet can't take the strain. But I got good gossip, which of course I can't post, and can't tell you about.
Another side effect of a good drinking night is the hours that I had put aside to try to catch up with my insane amount of work have VANISHED. I am so bogged down with rehearsal and teaching and freelance design work that I'm not even stressed... I'm sort-of wafting through the quagmire and hoping I don't get cut by any shards.
Oh, my friend Jean's book came out and is getting good reviews... I've seen some of the material in the book and heard her speak of it often, and it really is an incredible, skin-tingling story.
Oh, and in case you're wondering what a Kiki looks like...
(this is the notorious "birthday Kiki")
... is what I'm buzzing lightly upon.
Someone stole my identity tonight... well not tonight exactly, but I got my credit card statement back and calculated all the charges I did not spend and it came to something like $6604.51. If you want to be me that badly, whoever you are, would you mind also doing my laundry? Because I really haven't had any time...
Six Nights rehearsal tonight. Heidi and David and Kip are great. Eve will be great, but I sense she's a little uncomfortable. It's difficult bringing someone new into that group. Not sure what the formula is, but I think it involves alcohol and sex and art. Unless you're me. I managed to get away with just alcohol and art. Hee.
My roommie had a brunch yesterday for her pals; sausage and gorgonzola fritatta and pineapple-macadamia cinnamon wontons, with mai-tais and mimosas. She is sort-of magic.
Oh, my bestest pal felt bad that she didn't have a pic on my website from her wedding. She is and was a stunning bride. So here.
PATRICIA
Just finished writing the first draft of my Six Nights play a few moments ago... emailed it off to my director and my cast. Unbelieveable that I can check something major off my to-do list. I'm pretty pleased with it. It's rough but in a good way, or at least rough in the way that I like in other people's work.
I'm slightly embarrassed that I am the only playwright on the roster that didn't have a draft two weeks ago, and I believe we're the only play that hasn't begun rehearsal, but darnit, that's how the magic happens...
Just don't know about this bloggin' thing. Seems like I spend too much time on my frickin' computer as is. But my pal Yatta seems to think it won't take me too much time, and I don't need to write anything profound anyhoo, so who cares. And I doubt anyone is reading this...
Oh, I uploaded pics and some shaky video of my friends Hilary and Deron's gorgeous wedding from last weekend, for all those interested... it was a lovely, intimate ceremony. Hilary looked like a movie star, Deron looked smashing as always, Kip delivered a house-raising best-man speech, and Tina's service was a seven-tissue monologue. It was so great to see everyone dressed up and looking fabulous.
A series of prolonged explosions outside shook my apartment about an hour ago. It resembled thunder or fireworks, but I had my earplugs in because I was working and for several moments I hallucinated we were under attack. It was so persuasive in my mind that I actually went on nytimes.com to see if I could find any news about car bombs. Add me to the pile of paranoid American androids, if you please...
One last thing... I'm teaching English Comp at LaGuardia this semester and I actually misspelled the word "between" on my syllabus. Way to instill confindence in my students... *sigh*
