Holidays got you down? You probably need a dose of Shooby Taylor (aka "The Human Horn"). Just make sure you hang in until the poppy.
This post doesn't count. It's a plug.
Hey Chicago, go see my play. Only one week left! It's getting some real positive reviews. See for yourself... one, two, and three.
But leave the kiddies home... it's PG-13.
Okay okay, I'm gone, really, but I just wanted to show you three quick things (plus the strike is over, whoo-hoo):
1. I could stare at this for an incredibly unhealthy period of time. (It's a clock.)2. Best Saturday Night Live sketch in like ever. You may have to watch it twice.
3. My ass. (Note: Ass in the photo is NOT mine.)
Gotta take a liddle holiday bloggie break. And I'll tell you why.
- To stew in my own stink as I refuse to clean myself in my miserable and perpetually lukewarm new shower while waiting for the transit strike to pass
- To nurse the long gash on my knee incurred today by a perilous bicycle journey necessitated by said transit strike
- To pay more attention to my Greek while waiting for the aforementioned transit strike to pass
- To figure out how to get to the airport cheaply sans public transportation when I leave for Florida next week
- To organize Christmas cards from friends and loved ones while waiting for the transit strike to pass
- To picture Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger making out over and over again while waiting for the transit strike to pass
- To mourn the loss of Howard Stern from terrestrial radio and download lots of old shows from Acquisition while waiting for the transit strike to pass
- To try to write some plays rather than wasting all my time here waiting for the transit strike to pass
- To nurse the long gash on my knee incurred today by a perilous bicycle journey necessitated by said transit strike
... and other dumb shit. So, happy holidays, dudes. I'll see you in '06, but not too soon. In the meantime...
Go make fun of some poorly dressed celebrities. It will make you feel better than you think. (This one made me guffaw. An actual guffaw. Their commentary is so good it hurts.)
PS.... This was me yesterday, sans umbrella and rain and cool-looking bike. Ouch. Damn you, transit strike...
I ripped this from an in-flight magazine on my trip to Chicago last weekend, and found it much too excellent not to share:
Let's examine the panels more closely, shall we?
First panel: nothing to be alarmed at here, just your average suburban MILF driving her absurdly large toddler home from a long day of grocery shopping. But wait... is she on her CELL PHONE? What is she thinking? Doesn't she know her child is about to FREAK THE FUCK OUT FOR NO REASON?
HOLY SHIT!!!!
Just seconds ago, he had his head down and was very calmly staring at his penis wondering if it would ever be useful. But with the blink of an eye and the press of a 1-touch dialing feature, he has gone from Zero to Retard without so much as a pause.
The message? Forget about the danger you pose to other motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists... if you chat on your phone while driving, your spawn could turn into THIS!
Things to note about this graphic:
- It is humanly and statistically impossible for this child to be a) squirting mustard on the ceiling, b) pouring fruit juice on the seat, c) dumping a box of corn puffs across his lap, and d) screaming, ALL AT THE SAME TIME. He is a toddler. He is lucky if he can to pick his nose with any accuracy. Even a seasoned adult would have a difficult time coordinating this stunt.
And I don't care how nimble-fingered you are... NO ONE can open a bottle of juice with one hand. It simply can't be done. Go on. Try.
- The child's facial expression is completely erroneous. Rather than looking amazed at his own unbelieveable dexterity, or terrified at his mother's potential wrath, or delighted at his newfound potency, he appears lightly surprised and pleased. This is the face of a child who has just discovered he enjoys the feeling of warm poop in his own pants.
- There is no way this mom would purchase no-name condiments and sundries. She is a woman who demands frills from her world. I mean look at her.
- The child's facial expression is completely erroneous. Rather than looking amazed at his own unbelieveable dexterity, or terrified at his mother's potential wrath, or delighted at his newfound potency, he appears lightly surprised and pleased. This is the face of a child who has just discovered he enjoys the feeling of warm poop in his own pants.
Those slacks? That purse? We're talkin' Trader Joe's at the very LEAST.
And what is up with her MONSTER CLAW? Is that a legitimate deformity, or some sort of subtle, quiet rebellion by the designer against the ludicrous storyboard he was paid to illustrate?
AND, who the hell takes BOTH hands off the wheel to glance at the back seat? (Though to be fair, perhaps she hasn't learned how to operate her rearview mirror yet. Those can be tricky.)
Anyway. Thank goodness for Nokia...
They invented a golf-club that you shove into your dashboard, which not only allows you to speak in audio waves...
....but also miraculously transforms your child into The Fonz.
And everyone knows The Fonz would never spill fruit juice all over the back seat. He's far too slick.
Hey. I wanted to do a post about what a fucking liar I am, how I often catch myself in mid-lie and continue to follow through even though I know what I am saying is total crap, but then I realized I would have to admit what I was lying about and there would be a chance the folks I lied to would find out.
But let me just say that, being one who makes shit up for a living, I find it difficult to stop myself from doing so in real life. It's a form of self-preservation I think. It is also a private little way of entertaining myself. They aren't big harmful lies, but they are lies just the same and I am picturing each one unravelling from my mouth in slow motion and wrapping around the good faith of another human and wondering about the degree of bad behavior it suggests.
Do you do this too?
FYI, I have never lied on zee blog. YET. But would you care if I did? Do we not, as theatre professionals, have the onus of inventing ourselves on the fly, creating the version of ourselves that we want or need those around us to believe in most? Isn't it more or less an aspect of our profession? I think that's why so many of us lose our minds...
I have more to say about this, but what I really wanted to show you was a thoroughly disturbing Nutra-grain ad that Mike had on his blog a while ago... not to reappropriate it but I cannot get it out of my mind and so perhaps if I purge it here it will stop tormenting me.
by Alicia Ostriker
Man, I am talking to you
In my secret woman voice
And I would like it to feel
Like something from the inside of your head.
I am emitting this message today
While I walk home a half a snowy mile
Kicking the slush
And the shovelled boulder size lumps
That lie in my path.
Places where nobody has cleared the sidewalk
I climb over the snowplowed ridges
And walk in the gutter in the twilight. Can you
Hear me? You are of course in Los Angeles,
Land of the cowboy and Indian, busy
At a conference.
It never snows there
But we have been married so many years
I imagine you hear me perfectly well
Listen, You Jeremiah, you lamenting
Son of the father, what
Will your mama think of your behavior,
This childish
Sullenness before you left.
Listen,
Don't you ever say to yourself
This woman is my woman now forever,
A lifelong proposition, because I like her,
Because she suits me, drinking wine,
Taking a bath, talking,
The mentality suits me, the body
Given me plenty of satisfaction
Over the years and more to come.
I mean lifelong
Lifelong
Think about it, lifelong
What a sweet and pretty sound
If you think about it right.
A sound like treasure
A sound like precious
I mean it has that trochee lilt
That dying fall
What I mean is don't you sometimes say
Well, hallelujah, it's the whole damn package
Better grab it, grasp it
Like a kite in your windy mind,
Like a roller coaster that only
Comes around once
And if it bumps it bumps,
Or like the decision you made
Far back, far back
To be born in the first place,
To seize the whirling opportunity
Of life no matter what
And believe me
This is always a choice
Made in ignorance
And courage.
Same, honey,
With the person you love, when finally
The light comes on and you realize it's forever,
It's the whole package with the strings attached,
Might as well love it kicking and scratching
While hating it
While of course trying to tie it down
Secretly hope it keeps its craziness
Its freedom that you first married it for,
Its own weird and unfinished life.
Of course I'm speaking from the experience
Of riding you,
Honey, like a wild and bucking horse
In some western movie
Quite a while now
You streaking across the prairie
Me hanging on the bridle
Laughing and crying
And singing hallelujah
Fit to die.
My boots squeak on the snow as darkness falls,
The night is going to be clear here
In New Jersey,
The stars are going to come out
Like pinpricks,
The air will be big and pure, a pleasure to breathe.
Please get in touch:
I need to know how it is in California.
(from Prairie Schooner - Volume 77, Number 4, Winter 2003, pp. 26-28, University of Nebraska Press)
So tonight, fighting a head cold and my better judgement, I went to a benefit for this excellent literary magazine. Happily, it was catered by my favorite carbo loading haunt. HOWEVER. Let me just say there really can't be anything more annoying than watching a bunch of ultra-skinny New York literati eating from chinese take-out containers with chopsticks and ignoring two indie superstars (Dean and Britta, sans Luna proper).
Plus there was my infuriating exchange with a friend of an ex of a friend... she was talking about moving her family from her Soho loft to an apartment in deepest darkest Brooklyn. "We're looking at Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights, but it's sooo expensive..." she lamented. I said, "What about Kensington?" Her eyes got all wide. "Is it SAFE?" she asked. "Well, probably not, there are blacks and Indians and Puerto Ricans and other ethnic varieties. Best stay in Manhattan."
I WISH I had said that. Instead I pussied out and said something like "It's right by the Q, which is great, and it's 'transitional'. Give it a few years." Was I being non-confrontational? Or wimping out? You decide.
At any rate, the bigger tragedy was folks just WOULD NOT SHUT UP during Dean and Britta's set. The poor things were struggling to be heard over the roar of shmoozing thirty-somethings in pointy boots and sensitive sweaters. I felt an immediate and deep kinship (see earlier post). And after careful inspection, my friend and I decided Britta was far and away the hottest chick there. Show some respect, asswipes. If not for the music than for the sheer hotness... I mean come ON.
DO YOU FOOLS NEED OPERA GLASSES?
BECAUSE our old roommate ordered us to leave our apartment in Fort Greene stating she "didn't feel comfortable living with a married couple" but of course there was more to it
BECAUSE I did not have internet access in my new place until yesterday and therefore had nothing to distract from the reality of unpacking
BECAUSE each time I hang a framed photo on the wall it reminds me this is not the last place we will live and so the hanging seems pointless
BECAUSE on occassion I feel my heart stop for no reason
BECAUSE we have no furniture and we are eating on the floor
BECAUSE I want to find this romantic but cannot
BECAUSE I'll never be you, no matter how flexible or open-minded or unfinished I am
BECAUSE of these things, I am thinking of the feeling I had when I received the call from my mother on the payphone in my dorm the first week of freshman year telling me our family was staying at a hotel as our house had been taken by the bank, she told me my sister and brother had been awoken by the movers and were asked to pack just what they needed for overnight, she told me my father had only let her know the night before, she told me the house was no longer ours but we'd find a new one soon, she didn't tell me that for months afterwards I would drive very slowly past our old house like a stalker, she didn't tell me I'd see new curtains on my bedroom windows and wish murderous thoughts on the girl inside, she didn't tell me I'd get nauseated at the thought of her painting over the mural on my wall that took months to draw, she didn't tell me that at the new place I would find my prom dress shoved into a drawer, she didn't tell me that from that point on I would expect the ground to drop beneath my feet at any given moment, and that feeling would never go away no matter how old I got nor how stable my life seemed
well she probably didn't know
but even if she did
it wouldn't have changed anything.
This is why I hate moving
And why I have not written a blog in a while.
It's really me. Minus one inch.
It's a funny picture, but it's how I feel right now. Tiny, destructive, feral, and barely visible.
Hey. Don't listen to this. You'll get the blues. Especially if you put it on repeat and imagine yourself walking slow motion across a wide lawn filled with acquaintances who can't see you because you're dead.
(Thanks to Johnny Z. for the pic.)
In Chicago last weekend, leaving for San Fran this weekend. In moving-chaos at home, but finally out of boxes. Fully in the doldrums, and out of my mind. So, hi.
Wish things were spicier over here in Callaland, but for now you'll have to settle for these mean-ass bitches. But be warned-- professional humiliation doesn't come cheap.
