My other car is a Pynchon novel

just a couple of days after I added this to the 101 list i got a call from Theatre J in Washington DC asking me to spend a few days in december helping re-stage BETTY Rules, the rock musical featuring my favorite (and only) rock star friends, BETTY (most recently, of L-Word fame, for those of you lucky enough to have cable tv). my boss, seeing he probably had no choice, gave me 10 days off to go to new york and dc to rehearse and remount the production. (lucky for us, the new york portion of the rehearsal was over before the transit strike, and the transit strike was over before most of the design staff had to go back home to new york). an ulterior motive for going to the optional rehearsal in new york, of course, was getting to spend one night staying up late with lauren, paging through her collection of "wedding porn" (mainly glossy flower magazines) and gabbing about wedding plans, and a much-too-brief breakfast of new york-style bagels with mari (me: "will they toast bagels here?" mari (hushed whisper): "no, this is new york. don't ask, they'll laugh at you.")

alyson and tony's daughter, ruby, was kind enough to try out a pair of the alligator mittens i've been knitting for christmas gifts. when asked if they were alligators or crocodiles, she got very quiet for a moment, then responded "alligator!" with admirable conviction, and bit her father's nose with a mitten-clad hand for emphasis. let's hope that all the kids that are getting mittens this year like them that much - i've been knitting a pile of alligator mittens since July (and i still have two more pair to finish on the plane tomorrow).

the Vic is a chicago landmark, a slightly grimy old historic concert hall just around the corner from our old apartment in lakeview. i walked by there on a daily basis for two years but somehow never managed to go inside for anything, concert or otherwise, until i finally made it to a Brew n View. the whole experience was pleasantly remenicent of Flicks (the student movie night in college): the movies are six months out of date, the crowd raucous, and shouting at the screen is still encouraged, but in this version, there's also beer! 5 dollars and an ID gets you admission to a double feature of slightly-aged movies, and access to cheap and plentiful beer. amazingly, the 40-year-old virgin (a film that wild horses couldn't have dragged me to see but peer pressure finally succeeded), turned out to be much funnier, and have more heart, than the wedding crashers, which looked like a 90-minute j.crew commercial that left me wishing i'd had more to drink and that Owen Wilson would get a damn haircut.

too much has happened lately to do anything but summarize and plunge ahead, so:

-moved to a new apartment, still in chicago.
it's lovely, except for the shiny apricot bathroom.

-bought a (used) car
also lovely, no apricot color scheme, thankfully. owning a car is making my job SOOO much easier. haven't had to ride the train with something weird in tow (a 3' tall puppet, a fog machine, an ironing board, to name a few) in more than a month now. the car is already littered with random crap (mapquest directions to theatrical suppliers, bits of twine and cable, a boombox from the office, pages from a script, some old binders). when friends ride in my car, my excuse is: "production manager's car. i bought it so i wouldn't have to drag around so much crap in my backpack."

-thanksgiving with our "chicago family:" chelsea, lee, justin and cliff, where i triumphed over the chemistry experiment that is gravy, creating something from scratch that actually tasted like a sauce, rather than greasy flour. (the secret, in case you're wondering, is to start with a proper flour-and-butter roux, so that the flour has already cooked before you start making sauce out of it.)

-opened a couple of plays: The God of Hell (now closed), The Long Christmas Ride Home (playing through December 11) and Bottle Can Draft (now extended through December 19). am also getting ready to go to Washington DC to work on a remount of BETTY Rules, which, well, rules.