Hey folks,
Writing for the Boom is taking up all my blogging time these days. It's good, it's good, but I am just zapped between this and working on my screenplay and getting ready to move to Kansas for two months and various freelance design projects.
Hopefully will have some down time once I get the hang of it, but for now it's wintertime and the hangin' ain't easy.
Talk soon, puppies...
... where it's warm and humid and you can walk around without all your bulky winter gear that keeps rush-hour-people on public transport devices even THAT much closer (especially those bubble coats that take up three seats even without the person inside them).
Now, imagine the sky is brilliantly white, and you are the skinniest you have ever been. You've shaved your head too, something you never thought you'd actually do but man is it liberating. The hot coastal breezes tickle your scalp and you snigger to yourself at all the poor sods sloshing through snowy sludge in city streets everywhere.
You're walking around a tangerine plantation. The trees are so tall you can't see where they end. You are DYING for a tangerine, but of course you don't have a ladder to get one. And this makes you grumpy. Your life would be totally perfect right now if you had a tangerine. Why is that so difficult? Why is the world conspiring against you?
So you pray and pray to whatever god you like that s/he will see fit to shake those trees and send a glorious rain of tangerines upon you... because you deserve it. You work hard. Citrus is a simple reward.
Unfortunately, your god is having none of it. S/he's like, "Um, there's a genocide in Darfur and you're bothering me with this shit? Why can't you be happy for chrissakes? All you do is bitch and complain, with the bubble coats and the emerging. Ya want TANGERINES? Well, I'll give you fucking TANGERINES, bub." (Again with the bub.)
And tangerines begin to rain from the trees. But the trees are so high that the velocity of the falling makes the fruit about forty times heavier than it should be. And so each fruit becomes deadly. You must now dodge the very tangerines you had prayed for moments ago.
Got it? All right. Then GO.
Going down to DC again to a) see my little show and b) be interviewed for a large grant that would stick me in Berlin for a year. I'll let you know how it goes...
I heard a new excellent term yesterday, which I will immediately apply to myself: "impulse control deficient." How genteel is that? I'm going to use it for everything... "So sorry for snorting all your potting soil... I'm impulse control deficient. You understand."
In other news... yesterday I was so tweaked from spending yet another 18 hour day locked in my apartment drooling onto my computer that I made a swell proclamation to the spouse... I wanted to shout "I'M STIR-CRAZY" and "I'M FRIED", but instead I shouted "I'M STIR-FRY!!" Which kind of works too, if you think about it.
In even more news... please vandalize for Uma. She'll need a good laugh when she wakes up.
My attention has recently been called to an online debate between a DC reviewer and his audience, sparked by the reviewer's use of the "emerging" to define yours truly.
I'm sorry, Karen G., I can’t see anything wrong in calling Callaghan an emerging playwright. That’s what she is. She certainly isn’t an established playwright. She hasn’t been on Broadway, or had her work produced on HBO. She sings in a band. Read her blog; she’s having trouble paying for the ordinary expenses of life. These are not the characteristics of an established playwright. Since she is not an established playwright, she is either an emerging playwright or a lawyer (for example) who writes plays at night. That she is emerging — that her plays are being produced in venues outside of where she lives and where she went to school — is a sign of great and unusual promise. In any event, we need to call things by their real names in order to communicate sensibly with each other.
Okay, so now the mark of an established playwright is having an HBO series and health insurance. Conversely, the mark of an emerging playwright is singing in a band.
WHAT THE EFF? This is a theatre professional in a large city saying that shit... It's baffling. Why is it so difficult to conceive of a gradient between "beginning" and "famous?" Or to evaluate a person based on her body of work rather than her earning potential? That is so corporate America I can't even stand it. It's certainly the opposite of why I got into this business.
Read the rest here. Thanks Karen G, theatrelvr, and Shirley for the support... and hey theatre critics! Don't fucking read my blog and then act like you know my life. Expressing displeasure at paying thousands of dollars for dental work is a hell of a lot different than being unable to feed myself and pay my rent and handle other "ordinary expenses of life". Thanks.
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ADDENDUM: From Ronnie Ruff, founder of Founder DC Theatre Reviews
I feel compelled to write and let you know I and DCTR have the utmost respect for playwrights and other talented people that make up the theatre community. We too struggle to get our website recognized among the giants like The Washington Post and the huge theatre sites in New York. I can tell you honestly that Mr. Treanor did not mean any disrespect. That said his comments were certainly inflammatory to anyone who struggles to produce their art in today's society. Please accept my sincere apology for any stress this may have caused.
I wish this was funnier, but I like that it's out there:
PS: If any of you have occassion to work with a director named Thom Abbey, please talk to me before you sign anything.
Quiet on the blog for a bit... my internet energies have been absorbed elsewhere...
I've spent the past two mornings surfing the net and then writing and revising the script. Come visit me over there... the show's fun and you learn a lot too!
What happens when one of these...
...gets accidentally knocked up?
"She just squatted, popped it out and ran!! GET HER!"
Hee.
(Thanks JG.)
