6.28.01

vacation is good. since i arrived in sf, i've done very little, which was exactly what i needed. lauren and joe are at work all day long and i'm lounging around their apartment, mainly breaking up fights between the cats and reading dave eggar's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. at the moment, little cat is curled up in my lap like a little purr-monster. what he lacks in a tail and front left leg (the latter was lost in a car wreck, the former never existed in the first place), he makes up for in purrs and sheer pluck. and he's at that attrociously cute phase in which his ears and paws are fully-grown, but the rest of his body is about 1/4-cat sized, and his odd gait and lack of a tail make him look exactly like a bunny when he hops around the house.

dave eggars has yet to actually break my heart with the book (altho the first chapter about everyone dying of cancer was enough to give me nightmares on tuesday), he is a fabulous writer. tonight we're driving down to palo alto like the literary dorks that we are so that dave eggars can perhaps sign lauren's copy of the book or maybe answer one of our questions. last time we tried to go to a dave eggars reading, we arrived right on time to discover that everyone else has arrived much earlier than that; we were so far outside the building that we could only tell that he said witty things because of the belly laughs that echoed out of the room. we did, however, notice that the crowd outside the building was the most amazing collection of young, hip, beautiful, literally-looking types the city has ever produced. we agreed that next time we were looking for a beautiful literary boy to pick up on, we'd head for the nearest book reading and show up 10 minutes late. luckily, i already have a beautiful literary boy at the moment, so i can limit my book readings to the ones i'm actually interested in.

time to play lauren's geetar a bit, and then go for a run in the marina.

6.25.01

wow, how time flies. amadeus opened saturday, at last, and after a sunday show in 40 mph gusts of wind (we had to cut all the scenery, and chairs kept blowing around knocking audience members in the head), i spent today recovering from tech week. (for those of you who haven't had to live with me through a tech week yet, the last week before a show opens, the play is loaded into the theatre and all the technical elements are sorted out, and stage management-types like me work 12-14 hour days. add to that the fact that ISF is an outdoor theatre baked by the desert sun, and that i'm on my feet working for all 14 of those hours each day and you get the general idea of the tech week brutality and why the rest of my life goes to hell and i stop answering phone calls, email, communicating in general or washing my dishes). the company recovered nicely today by rafting the payette river. white water rapids alternated with water fights, a beach party on a sand bar in the middle of the river, and lying on my back on the raft, drinking beer and getting sunburned. it was a good day, despite the fact that my sunburned knees are now radiating heat through my jeans.

so now amadeus goes on hold for two weeks while some other shows do their thing, and i have a little time off. i'm on the 11:40 am flight to sf tomorrow morning. those of you who live in the area...i'm coming for you. or, if you don't hear from me, i'm staying at lauren's place and playing with her new kitty all day long, so call me there. vacation, whoo-hoo!

6.22.01

happy first day of summer, folks. oh, that was yesterday. well, close enough. i'm in tech right now, which prevents me from keeping track of what day it is as i labor under the 97 degree desert sun. the challenges of outdoor theatre are many. some thoughts:

-the wildlife count: skunk, deer, robins, geese, ducks, mosquitoes, mice, beetles the size of mice, and june bugs.

-the bad: blinding sun, sunburn, props melting in the heat, the William Shakespeare Mosquito-Breeding Pond, wind, a nine-foot tall bust of Mozart on wheels, a bloody heavy curtain with very poor rigging which i get to haul up and down up and down, mosquitoes, 15-hour work days, it's too dark to read my paperwork.

-the good: i get paid to do something new and interesting every day, from my "office" (stage left), i can look up and see the milky way, (how many jobs offer that perk?), i know all about making fake blood, and i expect to be really buff by the end of the summer for all my efforts dragging that curtain up and down again.

amadeus (by peter shaffer) is a fabulous play. had i more time and more properly functioning brain cells this morning, i'd give you a synopsis, but in the mean time you'll have to get the reviews from someone else.

6.17.01

i saw Tomb Raider last night. it required a higher level of willing suspension of disbelief than the average movie, but if you gave into the whole video-game-fantasy-woman-turned-movie thing, it was kinda fun. sort of like indiana jones, only with boobs. and boy did she have them. they were actually distracting from the rest of the movie, which i suppose is the point. but man, if they were distracting to me (how do they get silicone to bounce like that in the slo-mo scenes?), i can't imagine how a 16-year-old boy would be able to follow the plot at all. perhaps that's why the dialogue was so painfully simplistic. returning to the indiana jones analogy - much better special effects and sets, and the stakes were a bit higher (they're searching for an ancient relic that gives the owner the ability to control time), but the same general plot was there: good archaeologist races against the bad archaeologist to get the ancient relic. less focus on creepy-crawlies, more focus on guns strapped to thighs. high art it ain't, but i rarely say no to a free movie ticket, and a good time was had by all.

6.15.01

currently in my CD player: Throwing Muses, In a Doghouse, disc 1. highly recommended.

6.13.01

first task of the day:
ferry actors around town
get your own damn car

6.12.01

whee! more fan mail for me:

------FAN-MAIL-START-HERE-------
Jen,

you rule. and so does your website.

your stories are what keep me going for the oh-so-painful last hour and a half of my work day.

--------FAN-MAIL-END-HERE--------

this comes from a young man whose sig file is "You'd think building a satellite is complicated thing. And you'd be right."

i'm working lots right now, kitlens, which is why i have no time to post. amadeus opens next saturday night and there are a mere twenty-six scene changes (mostly carried out by the 15 year old acting apprentices) that i have to document and coordinate. this includes facilitating the movement of three 4'x9' tall periaktoi, not to mention the 8' tall bust of mozart which sails around the stage in a threatening sort of manner. each night, when salieri slits his throat, blood is supposed to actually spurt out of his neck and get all over the bust. i'm telling you - never a dull moment. sleep calls.

6.11.01

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where --" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

REMIXED:

Call you to me, method empty me should go here? You obtained to be, it was the cat which good it is transacted is influenced to the place. It was Alice at the place; as for me many worries. Then, as for that with the method without being of important to you it goes, "it was the cat." If I obtain somewhere, Alice who is added as explanation. Ohio state, you doing that, certainty said and is the cat which, your only walking sufficiently long.

(remixing tools courtesy of babelfish)

6.9.01

insanely busy at work. more soon.

6.7.01

the repercussions of National Open Mouth Insert Foot Day (see 6.5.01) just keep coming. somehow i have this ability to come off sounding manipulative when i'm think i'm being cute. this isn't the first time this has happened; hopefully i've learned my damn lesson now.

6.6.01

ah, i am sore from much frisbee-throwing with nick. here's a story:

To: lauren.oster@stanfordalumni.org, paul.kerschen@stanfordalumni.org
From: <jgadda@stanfordalumni.org>
Subject: Nighmare on Oak Street

So it's a lazy sunday afternoon, and I'm doing the laundry. I wash my towels, I wash my sheets, I decided that Mr. Bear seems a bit musty and could do with a trip through the wash as well. When I went upstairs to see how Mr. Bear liked the spin cycle, I notice that his fur has some red fuzz on it from the towel I washed him with. I think, well, I'll just run Mr. Bear thru again by himself, to get the red fuzz off. I turn on the washer. I go downstairs. I wait anxiously to have my bear back. I go upstairs, I open the washer, and, grinning up at me is....

the DECAPITATED HEAD OF MR BEAR!

It was like a horror movie. Only he's more like Nearly-Headless-Nick (the ghost character in the Harry Potter books), because his head isn't quite fully severed. And worse yet, the washer was full of his fluffy white guts. I'm afraid the washer's even going to be clogged with the stuff. I brought poor Mr. Bear downstairs for surgery, but decided the best thing would be to pull all the guts out, let them dry, dry Mr. Bear's lifeless sack of a body, and then try to put it all back together, perhaps with new stuffing. This is worse than the dog chewing on him (which is how he was promoted from Bear to Mr. Bear - he needed more dignity with Serra gnawing on him). I don't think there's a title I can give Mr. Bear to make up for this final disgrace. I think I'll have to promote him at least to Sir Bear.

Off to do bear surgery.

jen

postscript: after two days, the stuffing hadn't even begun to dry out, so i put it all into a pillow case, tied a knot in the top, and tossed it into the dryer. as you might have guessed, i returned an hour later to find that the knot had come undone and that the fluff was now all over the inside of the dryer. i spent twenty minutes frantically picking bits of fuzz out the lint trap lest my landlord should figure out what the hell has been clogging up his washer and dryer. mr. bear went back together surprisingly well; his head flops around a bit more than it used to, but otherwise he's the same old bear. come to think of it...later that fall, my landlord stopped letting us use his washer and dryer. i wonder if i had something to do with that...

6.5.01

please join me in a moment of silence, in honor of National Open Mouth Insert Foot Day, which I celebrated with gusto today. and when i wasn't accidentally insulting people, i was dropping stuff, knocking things over (and entire bucket of dirty mop water at the theatre, a chair onto this guy at the coffee shop, etc), and generally getting in the way. perhaps it was just Jen Has Two Left Feet Day. according to family legend, as a baby there was nothing i enjoyed more than trying to fit all of my toes into my own mouth. i'm pleased to report that i'm still flexible enough to at least get the big toe to my mouth. i'm sure this will come in handy when i run away and join the circus.

i spent the evening out at the theatre, helping out with the Two Gents tech. while i was sitting in the lawn of the amphitheatre, drinking a corona (okay, normally tech isn't really like this, it's just that it wasn't my show that was teching, so i was only there to help out, and there was beer left over from some donor event) and watching the sun set in the cottonwood trees above the stage, it occurred to be that i might have the best job in the world. the long summer evenings and desert sunsets in idaho go unparalleled as far as i'm concerned - the sky is enormous in a way that is indescribable - you have to stand beneath it and see the sun create shadows and highlights and depth in the clouds that streak across the sky for miles and miles in the clear air. low on the horizon, the sun lights up the foothills and makes them glow pink, and sparkles on the deep green of the trees along the river. the theatre is set along the boise river, about 5 miles out of town, tucked up against the foothills of the rocky mountains. as it darkens, swallows sail low over the stage, and deer (and the occasional skunk) wander out of the river bottom to visit back stage. this picture doesn't really do it justice, because you can't see any of the trees that border the theatre on two sides, but it gives the general impression.

6.4.01

nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess i'll go eat wor-er-erms. long skinny slimy ones, short fat juice ones, itsy bitsy teeny weeny worms!

all of you who haven't written me in a long time, and you know who you are, have now been suitably notifed that i miss you and i (perhaps mistakenly) think it's your turn to write.

6.3.01

i saw memento yesterday. go directly to the theatre and see this film. do not pass go. do not collect two hundred dollars. and for god's sake, don't read any reviews before you go. i mean that.

6.1.01

currently in my cd player: waking hour, by vienna teng. it took me a while to break the murmurs phase i was in, then there were some brief stints with the new wallflowers album (uninspiring, but anything with jakob dylan's voice reminds me of a boy i knew freshman year in college), cake's fashion nugget, and tom petty's greatest hits, but none of them really sank in. but i highly recommend waking hour. you can download some clips and a couple of whole songs from http://www.viennateng.com, as well as ordering the album </shameless plug for my artist friends>