7.25.02 – those who can’t, become critics

i had another night off, so i drove up to the cabin in mccall to hang out with my visiting aunt and uncle. after dinner my mother rallied the troupes into seeing the play how i learned to drive at the tiny alpine community playhouse. i wasn’t convinced that i wanted to spend my night off seeing another play, but i’d had too much wine at dinner to really argue. the play was a confusing meditation on issues of sexuality in a teenage girl and the much-older husband of her aunt. it kind of made the whole audience squirm, but not in a good way. the acting had good moments and bad ones, but the distinct lack of direction meant that these six twenty-year-old actors were left to hanging out to dry when it came to addressing very difficult, socially taboo issues and portraying a huge cast of characters ranging from ages 11 to 65. the director’s note in the program was so off beat that it convinced us that she’d been writing about a different play than the one she directed. and the grammar was abominable, something that i absolutely cannot bear. it’s one thing for me to have lazy grammar here, but another thing when it’s the director’s note. the lack of a stage manager (ahem) was evident in the general technical sloppiness, but i understand that it can be hard to convince anyone to be the stage manager in a community project. it’s not a very glamorous job, trust me. all of this could be forgiven, since it’s clear that the actors and director had thrown their hearts and souls into the production, were it not for the fact that the lead actress pronounced the word denouement “de-NEW-meant”. and the director LET her do it. now if that’s not turning your actors out to the wolves, i don’ t know what is.

7.23.02 – conversations held with my brother this weekend

on my ability to dress/act like a girl

matt: “dude, what’s wrong with your toenail?”

me: “it’s old nail polish.”

matt: “oh. sorry.”

on matt’s ability to drive like a maniac

matt: “check it out, jen, i can shift from third to fourth without stepping on the clutch!”

me: “lord. and i loaned you my car last summer? no wonder why the clutch sounds funny now.”

on getting to the concert on time

matt: “do you know how to get to winter park?” (location of said concert)

me: “no, do you?”

matt: “no”

(i dig thru the car looking for maps, finding three maps of idaho, none of colorado).

me:”you’ve been living here for two years and you don’t have a single map of colorado in the car??”

matt: (shrugs)

me: (picks up phone, dials mom) “hey, will you get out the atlas and tell us if winter park is east or west of idaho springs?”

mom: (looks at map) “it’s north.”

me: “oh. matt, i think we’re lost.”

7.21.02 – closer to fine

my not-yet-21-year-old brother picks me up from the denver airport this morning. i open the passenger side door and shove aside a bottle of malibu rum in order to sit down, making a feeble joke about open-container laws. “don’t worry, carrie and i drank the whole thing last night” he assures me. “it’s just a souvenir now.”

it’s disconcerting that my younger brother turned out to be the popular kid in the family. i mean, we were all nerds in high school, but then chris and i went on to nerd colleges, whereas matt ended up at one of the top five party schools in the nation. his friends, were they not friends of my brother, would be much too cool for me to hang out with.

after a lost ticket mishap, we made it to the KBCO rockfest concert, which was the point of this weekend’s trip to colorado. arriving three and a half hours late meant that we missed the B52’s entirely, but we did get to see jack johnson and the indigo girls, whom i have been wanting to see in concert for years. winter park is quite possibly the most picturesque concert venue on the planet. the stage was set up at the base of the ski lifts, and the general admission seating was on the hillside above the stage. the sky was blue and filled with puffy thunderclouds, the kind with white edges and grey underbellies, that sailed by at high speed all afternoon. colorado has that high rocky-mountain atmosphere where the air is cold but the sun shining thru the thin air is so hot it actually stings on the bare skin. unlike an indoor concert, the air smelled like pine trees and sun-warmed dirt, rather than sweat and beer, and my inability to see emily and amy’s faces on the far-away stage was made up for by the ring of jagged peaks that surround winter park. you know those perfect moments? the ones where everything seems gold-coloured and you stop and catch your breath and realize you are thankful just be in this moment? yeah. it was one of those.

and yet, something was missing from the day: andy. andy, with the kissable earlobes, who writes lullabies for his baby nephew, who can rhyme ‘lackadaisical’ and brings me coffee at work, who reads bedtime stories in a british accent and his eyes crinkle when he smiles, which he does often, whose absence i feel sharply, even moments after he leaves. i didn’t think our lives could intertwine so quickly. we haven’t been apart a single day since i met him, and suddenly i feel the distance pull, like cords inside my chest.

7.20.02 – re-opening old wounds

friendship isn’t, or shouldn’t be, something that one can wield like a weapon, a commody to bestow or withhold. after this many years of silence, eventually my heart got tired of breaking, and healed, leaving behind the slight taste of regret. it’s too late to rehash. water under the bridge time.

7.19.02 – Scattered T-Storms from the northwest at 9 mph

i don’t think that i can go back to recap all that’s happened in the past two months – i can only go forward. more free time these days, so i’m going to try to get the writing muscle back in shape. zeke is surly about having to share the computer chair with me; i’ve spent so little time in front of the computer lately that he thinks it’s his chair. he’s grooming himself now, each of us squeezed onto and spilling off the chair in a stubborn, uncomfortable position. he has this endearing habit of accidentally grooming me sometimes – he’ll be licking away at a paw, and then move over to my leg, and back to his paw, and never seem to notice that he’s been licking me clean along with himself.

Twelfth Night is playing tonight – it’s unfortunate that my parents picked this evening to see the show since thunderstorms and rain are predicted for the Boise area from 5 until 11pm tonight. late summer in Idaho – whose weather patterns i’d always been fond of before i started doing outdoor theatre – has arrived and made the past few shows fairly chaotic. it goes like this – the days dawn clear and sunny and hot – 110 last week – and as the day goes on the sun bakes the moisture out of the ground, and it piles up as great thunderclouds on the horizon, which spread and bloom like mushroom clouds over the sky until it blots out the late afternoon sun, cooling what would have been the hottest part of the day. these clouds, for reasons i don’t understand, are full of friction, and the rumble of thunder is a common sound. sometimes the humidity breaks with a rainstorm, other times the clouds break up and leave around sunset, leaving a warm summer sky filled with stars. it’s hard not to like this weather. unless you do outdoor theatre. last week, three of Much Ado‘s four performances were beset by 60 mph “fury of the gods” winds that sent set pieces flying, pouring rain that made the deck slippery like an ice-rink, lightening strikes all around the theatre. oops – gotta go to work early today – there’s a flash flood warning in effect for this afternoon’s storm. more later.

7.11.02 – it’s too hot out

6.26.02 – earwigs and sex toys

my new apartment is full of earwigs. i hate earwigs. zeke is really good at spotting them, but he won’t eat them. he just sort of goes on point and meows at the floor where the earwig is, and then i have to be the creepy-crawly whomper. tonight i scooped one up with an envelope and carried it to the kitchen sink. i shook the card. the earwig clung tight. i flipped the card harder. suddenly the earwig was gone, but there was no sign of him in the sink. that began one of those oh-my-god-the-earwig-is-on-me dances, trying to brush off all my clothes and hair at the same time. i never found the earwig, so now i’ve got that skin crawling sensation that lasts for hours after a close encounter with a spider.

a concerned reader writes in to assure me that an archer wand (see entry below) is a brand of dildo. it really sounds more like a dorky sort of D&D weapon to me. [rolls the dodecahedron dice] “a six! ha! with a flick of my archer wand, i inflect toe-curling, spine cracking orgasms on the evil troll so that i can pass safely across the bridge while he pants in oblivion.” ah, well. we can tell where i spent my time in high school. no prom night sex, but i did play a pretty mean elf.

6.23.02 – if you keep writing, i won’t have to…

today’s selection wins the award for the oddest piece of fan mail:

Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 20:03:36 -0400

Subject: Slithy-tove

From: jen lxxxxx

To:

Hey Jen,

Do you have a photo of you on your site? I found your pages by accident and

want to find out what you look like so I can play with my archer wand while

thinking of your articulate lips.

woo! women never hit on me. i’m more than just a set of articulate lips, i’ll have you know.

6.21.02 – international karmic DOO DOO

today’s selection from the slithy tove inbox gets the award for most creative use of punctuation and capitalization. not to mention the excellent phrase “international karmic DOO DOO” which i will try to work into a conversation at least once today:

From: 0000000@hotmail.com

To: celia@slithy-tove.net

Subject: bad bad man

Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:17:18 -0700

That Brit is an arrogant tool for thinking you’d CARE what he has to say about the Tove! And if he devotes time and energy to spreading international karmic DOO DOO via the Internet, he can’t be much of a firecracker in real life, himself!

Toodles!

A Fan of the Slithy-Tove

thank you for the warm fuzzy hate mail, all of you. and, from my apartment complex’s newsletter:

June is…Child Vision Awareness month, Fireworks Safety Month, International Men’s Month, Turkey Lover’s Month, National Pest Control Month, Accordian Awareness Month, National Iced-Tea Month, National Rose Month, National Safety Month, Rebuild Your Life Month, Student Safety Month, National Fruit and Vegetable Month, and National Dairy Month

man, who knew we had that many reasons to celebrate this month? given that there are only so many days in June, i propose that we combine a few of the holidays in to larger, uber-holidays: International Men Control Month, National Turkey-Lover’s Accordian Safety Month, or Rebuild Your Child’s Vision Thru Roses, Dairy and Iced-Tea Month.

6.19.02 – it never rains but it pours

from the slithy tove inbox:

From: 00000000@aol.com

Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 18:41:51 EDT

Subject: anonymous hate

To: celia@slithy-tove.net

miz slithy,

you are frightfully lithe and fetching in a most venomous manner. your willingness to bare yourself online makes baby jesus cry, and i feel sure that your unwavering friendship and incessant sympathy would bear me hurtlingly doomward, you redheaded nyarlathotep. i thank my lucky stars that i’ve never known the horror of your acquaintance. a pox on your dainties! i love and miss, i mean, hate your stinking guts!

via e-mail.

if only all my hate-mail were worded so eloquently – it would be joy to read about how i’ve offended the online world with my neuroses and amateurish photos and lists of three. :) i’d better go check my dainties for any signs of pox, tho…that sounds bad. love you and miss you, too.