10.30.02 – Detroit, MI, Pittsburgh, PA

i am in a communication wasteland. my cell phone broke, had to be mailed back to idaho, and then fed ex lost it in Flint, MI (of Roger and Me fame). the hotel charges us a $1.50/minute to make local calls, which pretty much makes being on the internet out of the question. (i’m posting this on a computer at kinko’s, on the company bill at a rate of $.20/minute). i have no calling card, no way to make long distance calls from the hotel. i’d borrow a cell phone from someone on the tour, but we’re all short on our daytime minutes so i’m completely incommunicado until after 9pm. i’ll hide in a starbucks with tolstoy until the rain stops, and try not to think about all the call-my-insurance-company type errands i’d planned to do with my day off.

10.27.02 – Elkhart, IN; Milwaukee, WI; Chicago, IL; Rockford, IL; Hammond, IN; Saginaw, MI

weekend, where did you go so fast? i have tendonitis in both hands and one of my elbows from lifting stuff that’s too heavy, but i can’t get enough days off in a row for it to heal – when i get out of bed in the morning i feel like an 70-year-old woman, all stiff and arthritic. i work for a theatrical sweatshop. having worked entirely in non-profit theatre before this tour, i hadn’t quite fully grasped the importance of unions in commercial theatre until now. unions prevent the show we did on friday from happening: we arrived at the road house to discover that it wasn’t really a theatre at all – more of an old 1930’s movie house (now crumbling to bits, as many of them are), with a curved thrust stage. no main drape, no masking or wing space, no backstage crossover, no headsets (the stage manager was calling cues over a walkie-talkie), no fly pipes so we couldn’t hang the cyc (plain white backdrop) and had to shine the cyc lights on the white back wall. half the crew didn’t show up, so we only had 2 guys to help us load in thru the back of the house. oh, and there was no heat. the place was barely 50 degrees – the poor school kids were turning blue in their seats. but the kicker really was the fact that the dressing rooms and backstage areas were infested with giant centipedes. i’m not making this up. i’ll publish photos after i get them scanned in. they were crawling up thru the drains in the sink and dropping off the ceiling onto people’s heads. now, i know i’m new to touring life, but i’m pretty sure that rock stars don’t have to put up with this kind of crap in their dressing rooms. and the awful thing is that the company sent a tour to this place last year. which means that they actually know how awful this space is, and they make us do a show there anyway because there’s money to be made. which is why i’m renewing my vow to work in non-profit theatre again where the product is art, not money at the expense of the performers’ health and safety.

on a more cheeful note, i got to see a show at Second City in Chicago last wednesday, which was super cool. Second City is the improv/sketch comedy house that has produced nearly all of the SNL comedic greats – Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Mike Meyers, etc. michael and i grabbed a commuter train from our hotel in Skokie, had dinner at this fabulous stir fry resturant and caught the show “Thank Heaven It Wasn’t 7/11: A Sense of Irony Returns to America.” halfway thru the evening it occured to me that for a couple of hours i felt like i’d escaped tour life. i was cleaned up and dressed for a night out, rather than the usual grubbiness of my daily schedule, having a great dinner out with a friend and seeing a cool show, exploring a new city and riding around on public transit and just somehow feeling normal. by the time we hopped on the L to go home, i felt like i should be heading back to my apartment, where zeke and a pair of p.j.s would be waiting for me. reality struck about the time we hit the hotel, and i was back to my vagabond existence. it’s not all bad. it’s just hard, living this way. feeling like my real life, whatever that is, is on hold while i do this tour. our sound tech, martin, has been doing these tours for 22 years. i can’t imagine spending three or six months of every year out on the road, feeling like my whole life is waiting for me to come back home to it. mom says that zeke sits at the top of the stairs every night till 1 or 2 am, waiting to see if i’ll come home, before he goes into their bedroom and shoves the dog out of her bed so that he can sleep there. (i love loyal pets.) this summer was the first time since i finished college that i finally got a rest from the wanderlust that drives me on to new adventures, new cities, new lives all the time. it was the first time that i liked my life so much that i stopped looking ahead to the next job, the next challenge, and just started living.

10.20.02 – Grand Rapids, MI

this hotel smells curiously like rice pudding. it’s odd, really, but not necessarily a bad thing – there are far worse things for a hotel to smell like. like the one in Joliet last week that smelled of dead, rotten fish. adam commented on the stench to me while we were standing at the front desk. “i know,” the girl at the desk said carelessly. “i called the guy whose room it’s coming from, but no one answered.” adam and i looked at one another in horror. i spent the rest of the night in my room (thankfully on a different floor) with the door locked, convinced that there was a dead body in the smelly room downstairs. suffice to say i did not enjoy my stay in Joliet.

and finally! a hotel room with incandescent light in the bathroom! i mean, what is it with hotels that insist on putting flickering, humming, stroby fluorescent lights in the bathroom all the time? do they actually want to make guests feel bad about their appearance all the time? cause it’s not like anyone is beautiful under the flicker of fluorescent light. i can’t think of a harder way to get up early in the morning than to roll out of bed and into a shower under a eye-searing, brain-numbing fluorescent panel.

photoshop 6.0 (at kinko’s) isn’t playing nicely with photoshop 5.0 LE (on my laptop), so there will be a continued delay in getting tour photos posted up here. in the mean time i will subject you to the pictures of my cat that my dad sends:

10.19.02 – Kalamazoo, MI; Joliet, IL; Grand Rapids, MI

I’ve changed time zones four times in the past five days and i have managed to oversleep/get up too early three of those days; suffice to say i’m a little disoriented. it is winter here. the wind is howling outside my hotel room window and my 1/2 mile walk to kinkos today necessitated a stocking cap, mittens and my teddy-bear coat. the teddy-bear coat has that name because it is a coat lined with light brown fake fur much like that of an old-fashioned, well-loved stuffed animal, so that wearing the coat is like being wrapped up in a big teddy bear.

new fan mail for the filthy stove!

To: brillig@slithy-tove.net

Subject:

Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 18:07:29 -0400

X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000

Hi Slithy.

I came across your site looking for a solution for my filthy stove, and instead I find some exellent, refreshing and witty text from a future brilliant writer. Keep it up.

umm, for filthy stoves try oven cleaner, i guess. or trick someone else into cleaning it, better yet. i typically don’t stick around long enough in the same apartment for my stove to get filthy. i find that being on tour stimulates one’s internal nesting instincts. walking thru home depot, picking up hardware for the set, i get distracted by things like shower curtains and candle holders. then i remember that duh! i don’t even have a home to put that stuff in. my cat lives with my parents, i live out of a suitcase. if i can brave the cold again tomorrow i will walk to kinkos and scan in some pictures of my gypsy lifestyle.

10.15.02 – indianapolis, IN

you know you’re in kentucky when,

-the laundromat has a sign asking people to please not wash their horse blankets, as the horse hair clogs the washing machine.

-your hotel is hosting the Central Kentucky Knife Club.

i am sooo happy to be back in the north. the final send-off from the nightmarish hotel in lexington was the sour milk on my breakfast cereal this morning. my conspiracy theory is that the microtoxins in the spoiled milk were what caused the migraine i got later in the morning. at about half hour, i realized that those sparkly blind spots in my vision were not being caused by looking into bright stage lights and pulled my stage manager, adam, aside.

me: i think i should tell you i’m getting a migraine

adam: uh, i’m sorry? need some ibuprofin?

me: that means that i’m going temporarily blind.

adam: oh. okay, umm, sure. this is what we’ll do.

most of my vision was back by the time the show started, but the look on adam’s face was pretty comical when i told him i was going blind. especially considering that michael, who runs the show backstage with me, scratched his cornea over the weekend and had an eyepatch over one eye, so that between the two of us we had a total of one eye.

tonight we’re in indiana, and the cold night air smelled like winter for the first time of the season. inside the hotel had the the musty scent of heaters turned on for the first time. it’s a pair of smells that i’m terribly fond of, and get all sorts of nostalgic over.

10.14.02 – charleston, WV, lexington , KY

there is NOTHING TO DO when you are sans motor vehicle and living in a motel on the outskirts of lexington, KY for the weekend. yes, given that most of my complaints are about lack of free time to myself, i won’t fail to entertain myself with internet access and a big thick russian novel for the rest of the day. but if i had a car my roommate majorie and i would be going horseback riding on a kentucky horse farm, so i’m kinda bummed about that. i’m not wild about the south (this california convert misses avocados on sale 4/$1, dry desert air and the ocean, and the juxtaposition of baptist churches and strip clubs here rankle my inner feminist), but fortunately tomorrow we’re headed back across the mason-dixon line to indiana, and then illinois and michigan.

i saw white oleander last night. it moves a bit too slow to please the average action-flick buff, but since watching movies is mostly a visual experience for me, i just require them to be eye-candy – as long as the plot and dialogue are not so awful as to be distracting, and i get to look at pretty people, costumes, and scenery, i’m happy.

mm. need a cafe nearby. the sort with squishy couches and non-fluorescent lighting and excellent espresso where i can settle down at a table amongst other bookish sorts and read my book all afternoon. since the best i can do is waffle house (did i mention that i hate the south?), and i already spent two hours there this morning with a book and bad coffee, i’m stuck in my hotel room for the afternoon. at least i have the internet to keep me company.

10.10.02 – charlottesville, VA

callie and duane were married on september 14, 2002, in troy, idaho.

10.9.02 – fairfield CT, lancaster PA, hagerstown, MD

hagerstown is the middle of nowhere. between the fact that i left my computer’s power cable in yesterday’s hotel, and that my phone is on analog roam, i feel truly cut off from the world. i’m borrowing time from my roomate’s computer now, but this could be my last post for a few days until i figure out how to track down a new AC adapter. answering email could be a bit (more) sporadic as well.

pennsylvania…

…smells funny. the water in the hotel shower smelled like lawn clippings, of all things.

…on route 222, you actually have to drive from virginville to escstacy via intercourse. i’m not making this up.

…road sign on the interstate:

the land of make-believe
next right

…last night, while parking the van, a man in a sedan pulled up by us and motioned for us to roll down window. “is this the host?” he asked us in a monotone. he had that pale,spaced out look of someone in, say, attack of the body-snatchers or something. “umm, this is the ramada,” said adam, gesturing toward the hotel. “do you know where the host is?” the guy repeated. “umm, no, sorry,” we said, and he drove away. adam turned to me. “did that just happen? okay aliens really are taking over lancaster.” i thought there was something strange about that town other than the smell. i decided not to drink the funny-smelling water.

10.6.02 – boston, MA

valerie and grant are getting married!! yay! it’s about time, i say. it’s reassuring to know that fairy tale romances sometimes do work out.

wedding fever is in the air. the same day i got val’s announcement, i got a similar message from an ex-boyfriend – you know the first love, the one that knocks you off your feet and makes you think that you two alone have invented being in love? yeah. he was that one. i was ready to (and very nearly did) follow him to the end of the earth. when he dumped me i felt like i couldn’t breathe for weeks. anyway, that was a long time ago, and when i got the email i say very still for a moment waiting to see if the old wounds were going to sting. not much happened. “well, then, good luck to her,” i thought. “she’s going to need it.”

i also had the immense privilege and joy of being the maid of honor at callie’s wedding a few weeks ago – wedding pictures are forthcoming when i get like two seconds of free time to myself on this tour, which might be a while from now, we’ll see.

10.5.02 – boston, MA

weird body trick of the day:

if i press my shoulder blades together, the muscles make the shape of a butterfly. cool.

the upside to all the hard work on this tour is that after five weeks i’m already noticably stronger. last spring, in an argument over hotel room beds, i challenged my brothers to an arm wrestling contest, and they both beat me. after this tour, however, i’m looking forward to a rematch at christmas.