3.8.02 – want fries with that?

the burger king on 42nd street advertises “free internet access with any food purchase!” does burger king as an ISP seem questionable to anyone else?

3.7.02 – it was a rhetorical question

an actor that nanci & i know came into town for an audition; in exchange for a deluxe portion of floor space in our queens apartment she insisted on buying us dinner. nanci protested politely, but hey, free food is an integral part of living on an intern’s salary so i went along without putting up much of a fight. we went to this place in the village called Stingy Lulu’s, which advertises “fabulous food, generous portions, stingy prices and O.K. service.” the service was better than O.K., but still disappointing since deb had promised that all the wait staff would be drag queens. it turns out that they only do that on weekends. most of the other patrons were in drag, however. the business card for the place said:

Cool DJ’s and disco balls

handsome guys pretty girls

ugly drag queens and stiff drinks

the bartender made wicked cosmopolitans, and i had salad with warm brie on it. what more could a girl want?

3.6.02 – life is weird, can i be your stylist?

life is weird. but generally in a good way. found the world’s greatest cafe in the village last night, i would go back there all the time just to sit on the cushioned window seat, drinking tea and reading something fashionable if only i could remember exactly where it is. jon & his roommate, garrett, were in nyc yesterday; they are actually the ones responsible for discovering said cafe. i think they originally wanted to go there because it was called the Esperanza Cafe and esperanza is just inherently funny. over funky over-priced teas garrett & i nearly bored jon to death comparing notes on our respective bengal cats (oh, does your cat chirp too? yeah! he makes these clicking sounds, like this! *cat noises* isn’t it scary how smart they are? mine always reminds me of a velociraptor when he’s hunting for his toy mice – you can actually see him thinking! mine can turn on the tv! oh, mine watches tv too! on and on, ad nausea). two contenders for Freak of the Week: the first was a guy who wandered through the Esperanza café a couple of times. he was talking loudly on his cell phone, pausing frequently to make sure that everyone around him was noticing him and his conversation – which wouldn’t have been weird except that the cell phone was actually a plastic toy phone with a coiled cord running inside his jacket, so that it looked like the phone was plugged into him. the Scary Freak of the Week would probably have to be the guy we encountered on the subway train later that night who was holding a 9mm in his lap, and actually loaded the clip into the gun while we were sitting across from him on the train (we got off at the next stop).

matt & i saw proof tonight on broadway – it was quite good. exactly the sort metaphysical math and science concepts meets humanity stuff that i really dig. jennifer jason leigh was starring in it; i thought she was an interesting actress to watch in terms of her physical characterization, but she has a voice that is clearly trained for the camera, not the stage. trying to project to the back of the house left her sounding nasal and strained, so that at intermission i heard people asking what sort of accent or impediment she was trying to affect. afterwards matt and i sat in a very 80’s hotel bar and over coffee and cheesecake i learned what an investment banker actually does, and he let me dissect the production we’d just seen. the cocktail waitresses fit right in to the 80’s scene we’d just walked in to; they had to wear these awful little black mini dresses with big poofy sleeves and a low-cut front. matt said, “i bet they get laid a lot.”

3.4.02 – monsters, inc.

there’s a radiator right next to the futon that is my bed right now. warm temperatures meant that the radiator was relatively inactive for the first week i was living here, so i kinda forgot about it. one night i had these terrible dreams in which something in my room was making this horrible, heavy breathing sound. clamp your teeth together, pull your lips back, and draw your breath in in several sharp bursts, and then let it rumble out in a sort of throaty growl, alternating with a snake-like hiss. that’s what it sounded like. i woke up from the dream, but the heavy breathing kept going on, right behind my head. i slowly realized that the sound was coming from the radiator, but in my sleepy state, having that sound in my room was still threatening. “no wonder kids are scared of the monster under the bed,” i thought to myself. “the monster is right here in the room with me, only he lives under the radiator, not the bed.” even still, getting up to go to the bathroom i half expected something to reach out and grab my ankle from under the futon, and i had to shove the closet door closed as i passed by. when mari stayed over here this weekend she confirmed that the radiator was indeed scary. i’m typing this in the living room now, but i can hear the radiator panting away back there. eek!

3.3.02 – 1:05am: yawn

had 3 days off from work in honor of the grammy’s (betty was nominated for a grammy so she had to go out to CA for the ceremony; unfortunately harry connick jr. stole it out from under her, but at least we got a break from rehearsal anyway), so i’ve been busy being a good tourist: went to museums, saw a show, took the ferry to ellis island, drank cosmopolitans in SoHo, misread the subway map and took a detour to brooklyn, ate crepes from a street vendor in central park and went window shopping on 5th avenue. now i am sleepy, so further details of my adventures will have to wait till tomorrow. or the next day.

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.