6.28.03 – definitions

dive bar:

one in which the waitress plops a half-full can of Hamm’s down on the table and says, “here, this was on that other table. it’s still cold.”

6.22.03 – sweet success

from my veggie garden:

6.23.03 – true colors

yesterday afternoon was a breakthrough with the carey family – spent the afternoon hanging out with andy’s family, and it was the first time in a year that 1) calvin the aged golden retriever didn’t bark at me when i arrived, 2) max the toddler didn’t get shy and refuse to talk around me and 3) mckay the baby didn’t cry when i tried to hold her. see, andy’s parents and siblings might have to pretend they like me, but you can always count on the pets and children to tell you how they really feel. max and i spent quality time together in the sandbox: i taught him to make sandcastles, he taught me to destroy them, then baby mckay cooed and giggled in my lap; i bounced her until she barfed on me. ah, nothing like baby puke to seal one’s ties to one’s (quasi) in-laws.

6.19.03 – free time

the fruit of my unemployed younger brother’s labor.

6.16.03 – the cult of perfectionism

i’ve been having these guilt dreams lately, which seem to be a thinly veiled message from my subconscious to me about being over committed. in the first dream, my childhood friend callie is getting married, and i am a bridesmaid (see the actual wedding). i left just before the wedding, cause i had to get some errands done, and got distracted and missed the wedding completely. in another, i was at the park with some friends. tracy, who recently broke her arm, fell playing soccer and re-injured the broken arm. i offered to take her to the hospital, so i went to get my car, but then i got distracted by some other things on my to-do list, and when i remembered and returned to the park, three hours had passed and someone else had taken her.

i can’t be everything to everyone. the trouble is, i don’t know how to stop. i have this carrot-before-the-donkey sort of syndrome where i’m always sure that if i can just get caught on my to-do list for once, then life will slow down. trouble is, the list just keeps getting longer. how often am i really letting down friends in real life, not just dreams? how can i learn that i’ll never get it just right? or stop wanting everything?

6.12.03 – just another day at the office

live theatre, folks. you just never know what’s gonna go wrong. there’s the usuals, the emergencies one can plan for: injuries (have first aid supplies and training on hand), the trap door malfunctioning (have a backup plan for those entrances), inclement weather (have ponchos to protect the costumes and garbage sacks for the audience members), wildlife (mention the skunk in the curtain speech so no one freaks out when she makes an appearance), and so forth. and then, there are those things you couldn’t have imagined. for example, tonight. in midsummer we have an actual 1963 volkswagon beatle that we drive across the stage a number of times during the show. there’s a fair amount of off-stage maneuvering as well, getting the car turned around in small wing space and so forth. after 40 years of loyal service, the horn decided to short out tonight. such that everytime someone turned the wheel more than about 2″, the horn would toot. picture me trying to do a 6-point turn off stage left (engine off, crew pushing the car), all the while the horn is “beep” “beeep” “beep” “BEEEEEP” “beep”ing through one of Puck’s monologues. now that’s comedy, folks.

6.11.03

us at the slithy tove concur with jake’s disappointment in the new and improved Liz Phair. her new single, “Why Can’t I?”: pure candy pop. even her signature off-key voice has been tweaked by a team of engineers into being pitch-perfect and so generic that it could have been sung by Avril Lavigne or any of a million other faceless one-hit-wonders. i am SO disappointed. compare it to a similar transformation made by Jewel: she appeared at halftime during last week’s San Antonio vs. New Jersey game wearing hotpants, baring midriff and sporting plenty of body glitter, singing candy pop so sugary it made my teeth hurt to listen to it: (lots of backup vocals to help bury any sort of individuality that the singer’s voice might have, repetitive lyrics that ultimately, mean nothing — you know the routine). and Jewel, you’re no Britney. leave the midriff baring to the likes of Christina Aguilera. not that it’s fair to compare Jewel to Liz Phair, but they were both artists who broke onto the scene by doing their own thing, and now selling out for reasons i can’t begin to fathom (it’s not like they need money, or more recognition to get gigs). prediction: “Why Can’t I?” will top the charts. we’ll be hearing it piped into the supermarket, repeated hourly on the radio. people who’ve never heard of liz phair will be buying up her new album, and then dumping it in the used bin six weeks later. she’ll be a pop sensation, rising to stardom on a big pile o’ garbage.

if you’d like to torture yourself, you, too, can go to lizphair.com and see the spectacle.

and while i’m bitching, take a look at this advertising banner i pulled off of blogspot earlier this evening:

isn’t there something kinda problematic with placing an ad for humanitarian aid in iraq next to an ad for “shock and awe” t-shirts? ick.

6.10.03 – you can’t always get whatcha want

ah, rep schedule, i love you so much. midsummer opened last weekend. for my trouble, i grew some new freckles, which i think just makes my face and arms look slightly dirty. now i’m rehearsing comedy afternoons and performing midsummer at night. zeke is neurotic as ever, given that A and i have both been working noon-midnight everyday. he manifest his distress on my day off by throwing up all over the kitchen floor at 7am, then climbing inside the fireplace (there are birds nesting in the chimney), and leaving sooty paw prints all over the house. while mopping up cat vomit, i thought, “people have children why?”

one of the perks of working in ISF’s outdoor theatre is that its location, five miles out of town, nestled between the river and the foothills, means that wildlife is still nearby. last week a doe poked her head out of the bushes backstage and watched us from about 50 yards away; and in the trap room there is a nest of baby birds, still featherless with great, bulbous eyes and loud voices. mama starvling flies in and out of the trap room with mouthfuls of green catepillars at dusk, keeping a wary eye on us from across the room. if we get too close she flutters to the concrete floor and does her best injured bird impression, to lure us away from her nest.

5.30.03 – codependence

no, no, i didn’t die of SARS, thank you for your messages of concern. just busy rehearsing midsummer and comedy of errors – rep schedule can be murder, although, thanks to my recent demontion, not nearly as stressful as last year’s summer season was.

codependent pets are keeping andy & i apart for the weekend – he has to sleep at his parents’ house so that their dog, Calvin won’t get lonely; i have to stay at our house so that my cat, Zeke won’t have abandonment issues. we left rehearsal at 10, call across town at midnight to say goodnight. who says pets resemble their owners?

cops just broke up the party at the Noisy Party Every Weekend house next door. the sound of fence cracking alerted me to the fact that teenages were using our backyard as an escape route. i stood on my back porch in pj’s and mis-matched shoes, gesturing with the tv remote and all but yelling, “you kids stay outta my tomatoes!” yup. i’m old.

5.25.03

i just might be boise’s first case of SARS. i feel about that good, anyway. everything hurts. to cheer me up, andy took me to see Mighty Wind tonight and the ten minute walk to the theater and back just about killed me. i wash my hands before i eat, what did i do to deserve this? come on, antibodies. time to rally the troops.