2.27.02 – midnight

my cat, midnight (the one that lives with my parents) was hit by a car this afternoon. my parents live on a quiet suburban street – the sort with so few cars that people still let their kids play in the street – and someone hit the cat in broad daylight and left him there. the neighbor’s little girl found him in the gutter. the neighbors took him to the vet, but his pelvis had been shattered and his back broken. the vet doped him up on pain killers until my mother could arrive; she kissed him goodbye and they had to put him down.

we got midnight when i was seven. when he was a kitten, he was so small that i could put him in my dollhouse, close up the walls and roof, and then peek in the windows and watch him run up and down the stairs and through the doorways, swatting furniture out of his way with a oversized paw: a furry black monster come to torment the dollhouse family’s peaceful lives. he grew up to be a huge black cat with long silky fur that smelled like woodsmoke when he’d come in from the cold. this afternoon he lay in the gutter in front of our house with a broken back for who knows how many hours because some asshole was in such a hurry to get where he was going that he couldn’t even stop to see what he’d hit. losing the cat isn’t as hard for me as thinking about how helpless he must have been, laying in the cold with his back legs paralyzed, waiting for my parents to come home from work.

2.26.02

the actor whose house i’m subletting gets great magazines: before i ship his mail off to him i get to read Harper’s, the New Yorker, Pottery Barn catalogue and American Theatre Magazine. this is a great deal. AMT’s cover stories this month were timely: one was about the Company of Fools, this new up-and-coming theatre company in Hailey, Idaho that’s being championed by Bruce Willis. what’s funny is that the writer describes Hailey as a “small, gritty western town, hugged by stark, rolling hills dotted with evergreens, sagebrush…” the sagebrush part maybe true, but Hailey is really just a suburb of Sun Valley, winter playground of the rich and famous. i mean, why else would bruce willis and demi moore have moved there and opened a restaurant, a night club, and later a theatre? the other one was about Homebody/Kabul, the new Tony Kushner play about Afghanistan that i’ve really really been wanting to see. the critics are so-so on it, seeing as how it’s four hours long and that’s enough to make the most dedicated theatre-goer squirm, but since i’ll go see anything by Tony Kushner any chance that i get, i’m prepared to stick it out. when we were in vienna last fall i dragged nick to see Angels in America, parts I and II in this shoebox of a theatre. we were the only members of the audience who didn’t belong to a high school english class (who snickered all the way through it), and it was still absolutely worth it.

i feel like a kid in a candy shop: here i am, working literally on the corner of 42nd street and broadway, surrounded by plays i want to see and i don’t have any money. when i lived in england, i managed to trick my university into giving me a research grant that paid for me to go to london and see plays on a regular basis. i need a rich patron. i’m trying really really hard to be financially responsible, but there’s a little devil sitting on my shoulder pointing out that who knows when i’ll be in nyc again and so i really ought to take advantage of everything i have here. chances are i’ll end up putting a few tickets on my credit card bill.

high on my list to see:

Urinetown (friend of friend is the SM for this fringe-turned-broadway number, so i get to watch from the booth for free)

Lion King (ditto)

Proof (matt and i are going to see this next week – he wanted to see a math-and-science sort of play)

Contact

Cabaret (starring Molly Ringwald)

Homebody/Kabul

Arms and the Man (we’re doing it at ISF this summer)

De La Guarda

i like all the energy in times square. some days working there really bites my ass, because when the director sends me out for a slice of pizza (british accent: “don’t go to that place around the corner, darling, their pizza is simply dreadful. go up 8th street till you get to ray’s pizza, it’s much better, thanks love”) because somehow he’s the only one in the room who can’t manage to pack a sandwich, there are like 8 zillion tourists that get in the way of me walking down the street quickly. but other times, i come out of the relatively calm, quiet rehearsal studio, step onto the street, and the air is just buzzing with all the energy and life that is swirling around. it helps that the sky is blue and the sun has been shining, too. i picked the right time to come to new york: in buffalo they’re expecting lake effect snow again this week. as if seven feet wasn’t enough for this winter.

2.25.02 – washington doesn’t suck!

there’s nothing terribly exciting to report about new york: it’s a big city, i work here. it’s funny how quickly i went from being intimidated by new york to behaving like a new yorker. i think it’s part of being an empath: i take a day or two to soak up a city’s vibe and then poof! i stop feeling at odds with the city and start blending in. my work schedule is light enough that i actually have some free time to play, but seeing as how i have about 8 cents to my name right now, i’m not doing too much shopping/dining/museum hopping, and mostly hanging around my sunnyside sublet reading anna karinina. on wednesday i’m going to go to the immigrant museum on ellis island and take pictures for my dad; he always talks about how ellis island (where his grandmother first came to america) is the one place in new york he’d most like to see.

disclaimer at mari’s request: washington doesn’t really suck, it was just Thomas Jefferson and some questionable turkey that made us want to hurl. it’s true, DC was sunny and warm(er than Buffalo) and had good ethiopian food and excellent lebanese food and even better it has mari. :)

2.23.02 – you, me, and russian fatalism

spent the evening with japanese take-out and tolstoy. rehearsal was stressful; i took a long long walk in manhattan to shake off the bad vibes and then came home in search of a chill evening. one of the good things about being a stage manager is that my schedule is such that i work all weekend and have mondays off, which means that i never feel compelled to have Exciting Weekend Plans. not that Exciting Weekend Plans are a bad thing, mind you, but i used to always feel so lame if i didn’t have somewhere to go on the weekend. now i either rehearse all day or run a show all evening, so there’s less of a reminder that “hey, it’s saturday night again and i don’t have Exciting Weekend Plans.” actually i tend to forget when exactly the weekends are, until i notice that everyone on the street is out partying or i wonder why the bank is closed.

saw part of Saving Forrester tonight. imagine my surprise when, while glancing away from the tv, i heard a familiar voice and turned to find that stephanie berry was playing the mother in the movie. stephanie was one of the actors in flyin’ west, the play that i worked on earlier this winter at the Studio. weird! i just spent two months working long days with this very cool woman, and now she’s in my tv!

mm. time for bed. anna karenina, it’s just you and me, baby.

2.21.02 – coffee mug lovin’

the naked cowboy was back in times square today. he’s very congenial, posing for pictures with tourists and everything. i didn’t get close enough to hear whether he can really sing or not. i imagine i’ll get another chance; he seems to be a feature in times square right now. luckily for him, it was a balmy SIXTY ONE degrees outside today. sunshine! i can feel an end to the winter blues…

i have this coffee mug with cartoon pictures of polar bears rolling around having a polar bear orgy (it’s much cuter than it sounds). in college, val nick-named it (appropriately) the fucking-bear mug. she even wrote a poem about it. apparently, bears weren’t the only option for the fucking-animal mugs; martin’s house has a mug collection including one with rabbits and another with penguins. i’m drinking english tea out of a fucking-bunny mug right now. am i the only one who thinks this is funny? quite possibly.

2.20.02 – it’s just TWO much fun

i woke up this morning with the overwhelming desire to stay put in buffalo, despite the fact that i’d been looking forward to working in new york all winter. “buffalo is easy,” i thought to myself. “i know where the grocery store is, how to get laundry done, which bars to avoid on thursday nights, how to park downtown without paying, and where to get good french toast at 4 in the morning.” the thought of having to learn all of that in another new town really wasn’t as appealing as staying in bed with zeke was. i don’t know why, but i arrived today feeling thoroughly intimidated by new york. there’s no reason for that, given that i’ve successfully and fearlessly navigated a dozen other large cities, in many of which i didn’t speak the language. but somehow new york intimidated me in a way that [san francisco, los angeles, boston, washington D.C., toronto, amsterdam, vienna, london, paris, rome, berlin, prague, tokyo or seoul] never did. okay, i take that back, i was scared shitless the first time that i went to paris. but i was only seventeen then and it was my first trip abroad. i suppose i just have more preconceptions about new york built up in my head than i did about other cities. all that stuff about how tough a place it is. or maybe there was just too much build up, because i’ve been lucky enough to travel quite a bit, and somehow never landed in new york before now. maybe i was intimadated because this place is the mecca of the american theatre community. at any rate, i was somehow completely paranoid that i would stick out like a sore thumb on the street, and that everthing about me would somehow say “country-bumpkin!!” and then people would want to pick my pockets or just generally make fun of me in a junior-high-school-gym-class sort of way.

we arrived at la guardia this morning, and found the house in queens without incident. the house is lovely and in a fairly quiet neighborhood. although i am sharing the place with my stage manager, i have my own bedroom and bath, complete with a tv and lots of shakespeare videos (we’re subletting an actor’s house) and a smooshy bed to sleep on. N had to go to meet with the show’s producer today, so i accompanied her as far as times square. once i’d successfully explored the subway system and spent a few hours wandering around midtown soaking up the city’s vibe i felt a little less lost. i have no words to accurately describe the blinking-flashing-huge-advertizements-everywhere-you-look sensory overload that is times square. once i got over my initial confusion that times square isn’t actually a square (ie, a city block that doesn’t have any cars or buildings, and maybe has a fountain or statue or something that people congregate around) at all, i was simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of STUFF going on there. it’s a total sensory overload. it felt like something out of the movie brazil. our rehearsal studio is on 42nd street, one block off broadway, right in the center of everything. back in queens N and i located the essentials: groceries, laundry, japanese, chinese, mexican and indian takeout menus. it took both of our giant brains plus an act of god to figure out how to make the tv-vcr-dvd-stereo system in my bedroom work, but once we did, we ate sushi, drank corona, and watched the powerpuff girls.

now that i’m back in a big city, you can look forward to the return of my Freak of the Week feature. this week’s freak would have to be the naked cowboy. this super-buff guy with a tan and long blond hair was standing in the center of times square, playing his guitar and singing with gusto. he was wearing only cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and a pair of tightie-whities that said “naked cowboys” on the butt. his boots had TIPS scrawled down each side, and he was inviting passersby to place money inside his boots. it was kind of a cold day to be playing guitar in nothing but your undies. let’s hope he earned enough tips to buy some jeans for tomorrow.

2.19.02 – things that go ‘squish’ in the night

the buffalo science museum has an exhibit called “Grossology: blood, boogers and things that live in our bodies.” apparently it’s wildly popular with the under-12 crowd. you get to walk through a giant nose and get covered in boogers. sort of like super sloppy double dare, only more educational.

i am now the proud owner of a Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo t-shirt, which i earned by going to the gym 30 times in the past 90 days. whoo hoo! the shirt’s about as ugly as i had expected, but at least i have new and improved biceps to wear with it. maybe i’ll cut the arms off and make it into a muscle shirt.

gotta go pack, as i am leaving for new york in the morning. assuming that all goes as planned, i’ll be able to post while i’m in new york. otherwise, i’ll be back in mid-march.

2.18.02 – thomas jefferson makes me queasy

my trip to washington was good, food poisoning not withstanding. Good Pants were sought, found, purchased and later returned in favor of a Good Haircut with Coco. we wandered around georgetown and looked at all the beautiful people walking their beautiful dogs and their beautiful houses, explored a happy independent bookstore where i was torn between buying the sequel to bridget jone’s diary and anna karenina, and ate ice cream on a regular basis. sunday mari and i made an omelet out of questionable turkey, and three hours later we were at the Jefferson Memorial, trying not to barf on Thomas J’s feet. they always say that men turn into such babies when they get sick; the same goes for me. nothing takes 20 years off my age faster than getting the stomach flu. mari’s sister-in-law made us seltzer water with lemon, and we laid around clutching our stomachs until i had to leave for the airport. as we left for the airport she handed us ginger ales. right after i opened mine i remembered that i’d given up soda for lent. “lent? since when do you celebrate lent?” asked mari. “i’m a lapsed catholic,” i told her. “the only things we celebrate are christmas, lent, and guilt.” i figured since i was feeling guilty about wasting the soda, or else would feel guilty about drinking it, that guilt would have to take the place of my lenten vows for the day. fortunately i had decided on anna karenina at the bookstore, since i had hours to kill at the airport and the usual airport trick of searching out the requisite cinnabon shop and eating a huge gooey cinnamon roll in order to past the time wasn’t going to work.

my stage manager made me sharpen 48 pencils by hand today, because the back of the box said “for best results use a hand-crank sharpener.” this is what she thinks an assistant is for. i really don’t mind sharpening pencils, but for god sake, electric pencil sharpeners were invented for a reason! besides, these are the pencils that we never use, we just give them out to the actors who forget to bring their own pencils. what do they care whether we sharpened them with a hand-crank sharpener? at this point, she doesn’t really make me upset any more; my relationship with her is so absurd some days that i just have to laugh at it. mind you, i might not be laughing by this time next week, since i’ll be sharing an apartment with her in NYC for the next month or so.

2.15.02 – weekend escapades

mari writes:

>i’m confronted with my total lack

> of good pants.

clearly, the only thing to do was reserve a plane ticket and head to DC for the weekend to help remedy the situation. posts will resume on monday.

2.14.02 (later)

valentine’s day, 2002: opening night of sleuth. i wore fishnet stockings, a velvet fringed scarf and chopsticks in my almost-long-enough-for-an-up-do hair. i’m not working backstage for this one, so i had two tickets for the show, but no date. sat alone near the back and shot daggers at all the women dressed in bright red. after the show randy put a glass of red wine in my hand and then saw to it that it never got below half full. figured i wasn’t drinking much because it was a skinny champagne glass, forgetting that what it lacks in width, it makes up for in height. moved to the party downstairs where i talked stanford drama talk with one of the actors, who graduated from stanford about 10 years before i did, all the while holding up the bar and feeling paranoid about whether i was talking too loud. made the situation worse by moving on to the next bar with the gang and letting hannah put a white russian into my hand. pretty soon all i wanted was to get out of the bar NOW. made hannah drive me home on her way to meet everyone at the Towne, where i watched one of the two dvds that i own and tried to keep my head upright. i haven’t had this too-much to drink since that time and lauren and paul and i drank gin and orange juice concentrate outside of terra, and then we tried to go to bed but we were too drunk, so we spent half the night sitting up – paul crying for humanity and me just trying not to barf.