web...blah...log

web paranoia

2012-03-02T00:52:00.003-05:00

So here we are.

I bet that all web pages are self-aware, paranoid and secretly wondering the same thing:

Why are you really reading this?

Could it be because I’m about to tell you the secret? The key to happiness, love, and weight loss?

Could it be because I’ve got all the dirty secrets about your favorite personalities?

Could it be because I have brainwashed you into thinking that because I have ads and high search results that I am somehow important enough to be listened to?

Could it be because I created that kick-ass misleading headline?

Could it be because I baited you with a photo of an adorable baby, puppy, or combination of the two... and promised video of romping?

Could it be because you messed up at Googling?

Could it be because you are just that bored at work?

Could it be because you just love those wacky news stories that quite possibly aren’t really true?

Could it be because the story link started with HOW TO?

Could it be because the story link ended with an ellipses and you just had to see how it ended?

Could it be because you adore my author and can’t wait to read the next clever syllable?

Could it be because you despise my author and are a glutton for punishment and/or a prolific author of angry, fist-shaking comments?

Could it be because you need just a few more minutes of eye strain so you can finally have a reason to get some new glasses?

Could it be because you thought there’d be nudity?

Could it be because the headline read that Someone Famous died and you just had to see who it was?

Could it be because you just couldn’t wait to see the latest untruths?

Could it be because you thought this was the page that told you how you could get rich with this one easy tip?

Could it be because you’re running low on your recommended daily allowance of schadenfreude?

Could it be because you like any and all entertainment that’s free?

Or is it just because the rest of the Internet is closed?

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

trophies

2012-02-25T00:10:00.005-05:00

So here we are.

Yes, yes, the Academy Awards are tomorrow night. I think I was supposed to put some sort of copyright symbol after “Academy Awards.” Or is that only required after the word “Oscar?” Or, is it not a ©, but rather a ™? I don’t know.

There are several huge conversations going on right now. One is the typical, timeless who-will-win/who-should-win/who-got-snubbed dialog. Another is the what-will-the-show-be-like/what-ratings-will-it-get/will-the-host-be-funny discussion. And of course, it wouldn’t be an awards show without a few frothy what-and-who-will-they-be-wearing confabs.

But the discourse that everyone tries to claim as newfangled is the whole are-the-Oscars-even-relevant-anymore sort of thing. It’s the go-to debate whenever there’s a popular movie that doesn’t get nominated (or an unpopular movie that does), or when there are surprise nominees and/or snubs. This seems to surface every year, and no doubt dates back to the end of the studio system and the rise of the independent producers... and maybe even earlier.

Above all, what seems to have happened to all awards shows (especially the Tonys and Grammys) is that they are no longer true ceremonies where trophies are presented, but rather very large televised commercials for each particular industry as a whole. So it’s less about the awards and more about the telecast. As a generally realistic (some say cynical) person, it doesn’t shock me that the Academy’s highest priority is putting on a shiny Show... but it does shock me when I keep hearing diatribes from critics -- who should consider film quality above television ratings -- who imply that the Oscar’s ratings slump stems from highbrow films with low box office dominating the Best Picture field.

There’s a big to-do on the New York Times website right now about how comedies never get Oscars and rarely get nominated. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly just wrote a piece about how, in a parallel world, Bridesmaids could win Best Picture and make the telecast better in the process.

I have no problem with comedies, Bridesmaids, or parallel universes. I do have a problem with everyone crapping on The Artist, implying that its frontrunner status has less to do with its being surprisingly groundbreaking, charming, and lovely and more to do with Mr. Weinstein and his Oscar-nabbing machine. Mr. Gleiberman sees The Artist as a prestige film seen by a handful of film snobs who don’t even eat popcorn. That’s why the Oscar ratings are low, he argues. Give the prize to a film like Bridesmaids, and the viewers will care.

Here’s the dirty little secret that no one likes to think about: none of it matters.

There have always been, and always will be, egregious awards snubs. Some of them will be immediately obvious, others won’t be given their proper amounts of righteous indignation until years, even decades later. An award, especially one of the Big Four (Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Grammy), simultaneously means everything and means nothing. A piece of work, however, is the only thing that truly lasts.

Bridesmaids may not have a chance to win Best Picture, but it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t earned its place in film and pop culture history, not to mention a huge pile of money. The only thing an Oscar would truly add to its legacy is a little logo on the DVD box.

I often think about one of my favorite films: Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, from 1957, starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal in staggeringly brilliant performances. One of the most prescient films in history (neck and neck with Network), it was too dark and truth-filled for its time. It was a flop, and totally ignored by the Academy in every category. Even Budd Schulberg’s biting, blistering screenplay found no love. But 55 years later, it is no less incredible. It is still a great film, even without any trophies to its name.

I also find myself thinking about John Candy. (I know. You don’t expect any blog to go from Elia Kazan to John Candy in a single paragraph, but ah, my devoted dozens, you know that this is not a blog.) I’ve been seeing Splash come up a lot lately on the premium channels and have had far too much free time to stop and watch it... and while I’ve never stopped being fond of John Candy, I’ve come to appreciate more and more the fact that the man took every little role he had and made them each a comic and heartfelt gem. And the lack of acting awards on his mantel does not diminish his work at all. Likewise, an Oscar would not have made him any more beloved or brilliant.

Truly, historically, it’s a far, far better thing to be a great, loved, and successful film or actor that never won an Oscar than to be a good film or actor that did.

So let’s tell it like it is. The Oscars are really just about a telecast: several overstuffed hours of stars, dresses, moments, tears, and poor teleprompter reading. Some trophies are also given out. But history, not Oscar night, ultimately decides what the best pictures really are.

Because, if television has truly taught us anything, it’s that Bobby Brady might have lost that Golden Scoop Trophy in the ice cream eating contest on that old episode of The Brady Bunch, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t eat the hell out of some ice cream with his hands tied behind his back.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

lipstick

2012-02-21T00:05:00.008-05:00

So here we are.

This past Sunday night, I was called into action as an emergency replacement to be the announcer of the Writer’s Guild Awards ceremony in New York. This sounds glamorous. It was not. (Standing in the cramped, cable-strewn shadows for several hours straight, even in one’s most comfortable cubic zirconiums and chunkiest heels, is not often listed amongst the dreams of high school seniors.)

I had a great time doing it, though, and even with that pinched-nerve feeling in my legs, it was fun. And part of the fun was pretending that wearing lipstick mattered.

Ten years ago this month, I had a similar situation when I was in the City Center Encores! production of Carnival. I was one of two puppeteers. Note: I did not play a puppeteer, I was a puppeteer. Brian Stokes Mitchell played the puppeteer, and because the puppets were Muppet-style (and also because Stokes, while a great guy, is not a puppeteer), it was my job to make it seem as though he was flawlessly puppeteering the characters that he was voicing. In other words, my face was never seen, and my voice was never heard onstage throughout the entire show. I only wiggled the dolls.

(This is how I got my Equity card, by the way.)

And yet, I put on an entire face for it. The whole deal: mascara, liner, lipstick... mostly because I did eventually come onstage for the curtain call. Mind you, I came out for the curtain call holding two large puppets in front of my beautifully made-up face, which did distract more than a bit from my cosmetic handiwork, as I knew it would.

But it wouldn’t have felt real if I hadn’t caked on the spackle pre-show. Makeup is about more than covering flaws or creating a look... to me, sometimes it’s about the ritual and tradition. If I didn’t put on makeup for Carnival, I wouldn’t have felt like I was truly part of the show... or that I’d earned that Equity card.

Just as if I didn’t put on makeup or faux sparklies for the WGA Awards, it wouldn’t have felt like the special event that it was. And that probably would have been reflected - even only subconsciously - in my voice.

People like to envy voiceover artists with a wistful gee, they never have to put on makeup... they can go to work in sweatpants... and sure, I don’t always go to voiceover auditions with a face on. But if I’m lucky enough to book a gig, even if it’s “faceless,” you can bet that I’m putting on lipstick. It respects the job and makes it real.

And hey, audio engineers are people too. They should get to see a nice crimson lip now and then.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

silly rant

2012-02-15T00:10:00.004-05:00

So here we are.

I am very angry regarding Hugo. I am not angry at Hugo, mind you. But I am very angry regarding it.

I loved this film. Loved it. Fell right into its charms, went on the journey, and allowed it to crawl into my heart and wring my eyes dry.

Until I saw it a few weeks ago, though, I had no desire to see it. At all.

From all of its initial marketing, not to mention the Thanksgiving release date, I presumed it was just another kid’s fantasy film, filled with glib fantastical-ness and stuffed to the gills with visual self-pleasuring, pockmarked with all of the clichéd beats and stock characters we’ve come to expect from previous half-assed attempts at child’s-eye worlds.

It was none of these things. It was real, true, and touchable. It was one of the few recent effects-heavy films where the CG and 3D seemed authentic and made sense. It wasn’t precious. It was fascinating and historical, rich and beautiful. And it was definitely, most definitely, not a kid’s film.

This angers me. There is this swift judgement made on all stories that feature children as protagonists: that if a kid is at the center of it, it must be a kids’ film. Of course, this is ridiculous. It’s like saying that War Horse is a horse’s film or that only barnyard animals will enjoy Babe. (To the animals: I mean no offense, so please do not bombard me with irate comments.)

More than this, though, is the added assumption that anything suitable for kids -- specifically, things without nudity, violence, or profanity -- is only for kids.

Of course this is patently untrue. The Artist contains no nudity, no violence, and no profanity, but it is hardly touted as a family film, let alone a kiddie picture. (For those who would point to the life-threatening fire and heavy drinking in The Artist, these exist in Hugo as well.)

In actuality, I’m not sure that kids would even appreciate Hugo until they hit double-digits. It’s actually a very adult film. But to refer to a film, particularly one directed by Martin Scorsese, as “adult,” conjures up very different, very much not Hugo-esque images.

I always find it irksome when bloggers and magazine columnists make condescending winks at childless adults who see Disney and Pixar movies, as if there was nothing enjoyable about them on an adult level. Fools, they. And I still recall the outcry over the Harry Potter books “taking up space” on the New York Times Bestseller list, resulting in a separate list for children’s books... as if writing a 700-page book about a boy wizard and his complex world is so much easier than writing a 200-page Harlequin Romance romp. Just because something is aimed at a younger audience, it does not automatically make it less creative or moving or enjoyable to those who are longer in the tooth.

Then again, a lot of kiddie fare is indeed crap on a bed of crap (albeit celebrity-voiced crap on a bed of crap), which is exactly why I had no desire to see Hugo in the first place. But the blasted marketers for Hugo should have had more faith in the product they were hired to sell. Were it not for its Oscar nominations, the film would have withered and died by now, remembered by few.

Let me be clear: I loved The Artist and had it pegged as the sure-fire Oscar winner for Best Picture... until I saw Hugo. See them both, if you haven’t yet, and I think you will find them both equally breathtaking in radically different ways. It’s going to be an interesting contest, especially since The Artist and Hugo are both love letters to the cinema. (Did you know that about Hugo? Because I sure as hell didn’t until I saw it.)

Of course, now that there’s an Oscar race to win, there are much better TV spots out there, not just for Hugo, but for The Descendants as well. Then again, they run so often (at least, they do in New York City) that they make me angry... is it so hard to find a happy medium between lousy infrequency and eloquent overkill?

I still believe that The Artist will prevail as Best Picture, but that Martin Scorsese may -- and should -- get Best Director. Both deserve screenplay awards, but I think the writing team for The Descendants will get Best Adapted Screenplay over Hugo (and I’m not just saying that as a fan of Jim Rash) and that Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris will win Best Original Screenplay over The Artist.

And that’s another movie - Midnight in Paris - that I loved but almost didn’t see thanks to its crappy TV spots. There must be some sort of middle ground, wherein a trailer or promo can actually give the viewer a proper taste of a film without giving everything away. If they gave an Oscar for trailer editing and/or marketing, maybe someone would make a real effort to figure it out.

Speaking of Woody Allen, I just realized that if he’d taken out that butt shot and one or two words, Radio Days would have been considered a kids’ film by Hollywood standards. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Oh, forget it. This is the worst term paper on the state of contemporary film ever.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

do not bend

2012-02-09T00:15:00.014-05:00

So here we are.

It was an odd situation for me to be in. For some inexplicable reason, my website’s email address had received seven requests for autographed photos in a single week, all from Eastern Europe. I don’t get seven requests in a month... and lately, not even in a year. (This is not a complaint.)

With each new email, a line from Singles played over and over in my head, as spoken by Cliff, the lead singer of Citizen Dick, after reading a lousy review of his band: Just remember one thing... we are loved in Belgium, and in Italy! I was underemployed in America, but somehow, I’d suddenly taken the Czech Republic and Ukraine by storm.

So I complied.

It is a silly thing to sign an autograph, especially on an airbrushed picture of myself. I never know what to inscribe, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want this from me. There is no inherent value in my signature, as I am a) alive, b) not particularly sought-out, and c) hardly a rare commodity. And there is an incredible irony in that the people whose autographs are actually of some value are the people who are least likely to honor such a request. The scribblings of people like me with plenty of time and unused headshots to spare aren’t worth the postage. There has been the same signed photo of me for sale online for at least five years now, with not a single taker (one of my many adventures in humility). Oh, when will people learn?

But I figure that life is odd and ridiculous, so why should I question yet another odd and ridiculous facet of it? Besides, if my touching of Sharpie to photographic paper can bring a soul one single iota of joy, then I can hardly say him/her nay.

As I walked to the post office bleary-eyed, barefaced, and ponytailed, carrying my little stack of manila envelopes, a paranoid scenario regarding my unusually prolific international correspondence played out in my head:

Disgruntled Postal Worker: Hmm, sending to Czech Republic... Ukraine... Poland... Germany...

Me: Yes.

DPW: No return address on these?

Me: No.

DPW: Do these contain any liquids or hazardous substances?

Me: No.

DPW: What’s in ‘em?

Me: Just pictures.

DPW: Of what, you?

Me: Yes.

DPW: (pause) ...why?

Me: (shrinking) I do not know.

But it didn’t play out that way in reality. The postal worker was not disgruntled in any way, and did not ask any questions at all, not even about the lack of a return address. He just stamped them with DO NOT BEND and I handed him 22 bucks. It was all very ordinary.

Hmm... maybe the Czechs have been sending autograph requests to all of my neighbors, too.

I guess we'll see what happens next week. I have two more requests from the Czech Republic, and my first from Slovakia.

And to think, my passport is blank. My photographs are more traveled than I am.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

melted

2012-02-04T00:02:00.005-05:00

So here we are.

Yesterday began with four words. Four words in the subject line of an email from my sister, four small, horrible words:

Sarris is on fire.

Sarris Candies is a small, family-run institution in Canonsburg, PA (a suburb of Pittsburgh), that has been churning out the greatest -- and I truly mean greatest -- milk chocolate on the planet since 1960. (They also make fabulous dark chocolate, but oh, the milk.) Anything that is dipped in this milk chocolate, be it caramel, nuts, peanut butter, and especially pretzels, is elevated to an entirely new stratosphere of awesome deliciousness.

There is only one location, one site that houses the entire factory, shop, and adjacent ice cream parlor.

And it was on fire.

Sarris has been in existence my entire life, but thanks to a mother who was always on a diet, always lacking in disposable income, and who was also very much familiar with the concept of Pandora’s Box, I was totally unaware of it for most of my childhood. Even when we were driven to all the various parties and functions of the late 70s and early 80s at the Roll-R-Skate, less than a half-mile away from Sarris, Mom never made the detour. Somehow she was able to keep this place entirely removed from our sugar-addicted psyches.

That changed when I hit high school and my extra-curricular life became based solely on how many Sarris candy bars I could sell. If I wanted to be in my school’s Thespian troupe, membership came at an annual price: selling five cases of 24 bars at a dollar per bar. I was rarely seen without one of those cardboard boxes with the built-in handles for easy transport and handy sales on the go. However, a side effect of this was that, as a result of their constant availability, many long bus rides to and from Saturday speech tournaments saw several of these luscious slabs of chocolate -- generously dotted with huge, whole almonds -- crammed into my restless maw. Hours and hours of babysitting income would ultimately be injected directly into my hips.

My non-actor-wannabe friends were not excluded from chocolate sales, either. Some of them sold the entire Sarris product line from fundraising catalogues once or twice a year, which is where I learned about the incredible one-pound filled chocolate Easter eggs... and the pretzels. Oh, the pretzels. Some say that the meeting of chocolate and peanut butter changed the world. I contend that the dipping of pretzel into molten chocolate was a revolution.

And when I finally learned to drive... well, I finally saw the humble emporium for myself, with its giant chocolate castle, its endless case of confections, and treats packed wall-to-wall and up to the rafters, and I was never the same again.

For four years of high school, my life revolved around this chocolate, and then I went away... to college, to life, to places where no one had ever heard of Sarris. And I would dream about it... how it smelled, how it melted against the warmth of a single touch, how it gave so easily against a bite, how you could actually see the creaminess by its perfect milky shade of cocoa.

On the rare occasions of my going home to Pittsburgh, even if I couldn’t get to the Sarris shop, I could still get a fix... by stopping at the Rite Aid in the Pittsburgh Airport. No, it wasn’t fancy enough to be sold at a separate kiosk or at the souvenir stands. But fancy is overrated. Eventually, you could even get Sarris at the Giant Eagle supermarket.

And when I found out they did mail-order, life changed again. Even while surrounded by all the posh New York City chocolatiers, I pored over every humble Sarris catalogue that arrived, salivating at the choco-porn. Every Christmas became a very expensive opportunity to stock up. We had to. Not only had we turned on countless friends to chocolate-covered pretzels, popcorn, and Oreos (oh sweet mercy, the popcorn and Oreos), but we also had to order when the weather was cold, because Sarris couldn’t ship chocolates when it was above 70 degrees.

One of my favorite long-ago Broadway memories is on one summer’s day, when a family of total strangers, visiting New York City from Pittsburgh, met me at the stage door with a bag of Sarris pretzels. They’d heard where I was from and wanted to give me the taste of home that I couldn’t get shipped to me in hot weather, so they imported it themselves on the plane. Pittsburgh is special that way.

I guess that’s part of what makes Sarris so special. Yes, it is delicious candy, but it’s also so much a part of Pittsburgh life. So many kids have raised money selling that candy. So many families have taken trips to the ice cream parlor. (Not mine, but so many.) Not to mention the fact that this family-owned company, in the minds of many Pittsburghers, perfected, if not created, the chocolate-covered pretzel. Never underestimate a Pittsburgher’s loyalty and pride.

Sarris is on fire.

We’d ordered far less chocolate this Christmas, in the name of financial and caloric austerity. Just a few pails of pretzels. No caramels, no drizzled popcorn, no Oreos, no meltaways, no malted milk balls, no pecanettes, no bars... it took a great deal of restraint. But hey, we figured. Sarris isn’t going anywhere. There’s always next year.

Sarris is on fire.

I’d spent the last week pondering making a Valentine’s order for my husband as a surprise. I procrastinated, waffled, procrastinated some more. There were daily emails from Sarris, as there always are around the chocolate-based holidays. I had to ignore them, for the sake of my pants.

Sarris is on fire.

It was like hearing news about a dear old faraway friend that you’ve owed a letter to for too long: that the dear old faraway friend has been hit by a car. You can’t rush over, you have no right to inquire. All you can do is hope and pray and wait.

I spent the morning thinking about candy and my youth, home and the years that have passed, and how my obsessing about this event was all at once incredibly silly and not silly at all.

And then the good news trickled in: the fire was under control, no one was hurt, there was no major structural damage, the factory was fine, the ice cream parlor suffered the most damage and won’t reopen for a few weeks, the HAZMAT team washed the copious amounts of melted chocolate off of the firefighters... and then, finally, the reassurance that most of Sarris (sans giant chocolate castle, which no doubt melted to the great beyond) would be up and running again by Monday.

The dear old faraway friend is going to be okay, thankfully.

If you live in the United States, you should visit them at www.sarriscandies.com. You’re welcome, taste buds and gentle souls... and I’m terribly, terribly sorry, pants.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

alumni event

2012-02-01T00:05:00.003-05:00

So here we are.

In the dead, gray pall of winter, in the midst of resolutions and reinventions, and after the crazy holiday crush is over, this is a prime time for college alumni organizations all over the country to have various networking events, in the name of jumpstarting temporarily stalled careers. Just for fun, let’s read between the lines of one of these notices and call them what they are, shall we?

February 12, 6-8 PM:

Seminar - How To Schmooze and Cozy Up Whilst Pretending You Are Neither Schmoozing Nor Cozying Up

Presented by: Someone Much Younger Than You

Description: Schmoozing has gotten a bad name. That’s why we call it “networking.” Still, there’s an art to doing it in a way so that people don’t know you’re doing it. It’s called Mind Games. Come play some with us.

Cost: $15, includes photocopied handouts and a false feeling that you’ve learned something valuable.

February 20, 6-8 PM:

Seminar - How To Convince Someone You Barely Knew in College But is Now Really Important That You Two Were Best Pals

Presented by: Someone Who Just Graduated and Is Trying to Start a Consulting Firm

Description: Social media has become increasingly important in one’s career, if for no other reason than to rewrite the past. That geek you mercilessly bullied is now the head of a tech company, but if you play your Facebook cards right, he could become your friend. And what friend wouldn’t help out another friend and maybe give him a job? This seminar addresses the effectiveness of baby photos, tagging, sending virtual muffin baskets, and status updates that imply a religious rebirth and/or spiritual awakening on your part.

Cost: $20, includes two hours of your life that you’ll never get back and possibly some Twitter followers.

February 27, 5-7 PM:

Event - Who Are You and What Can You Do For Me Wine and Cheese Reception and Boot-Licking Opportunity

Hosted by: Someone Who is Also on the Alumni Giving Committee and Will Definitely Hit You Up For a Donation

Place: His Pricey Club That Requires Members to Rent the Library Once a Quarter

Description: Come join a lot of people who we hope are big and successful fellow alumnae who are keen to hire you, but in reality are probably all recent graduates who are in the same boat of desperation as you. We guarantee that you will leave with your smartphone filled with useless new contacts who will do nothing for you except poke you on Facebook and send you Funny or Die links. Just in case, though, bring real business cards with you, as the older alums may not particularly care to scan the personal QR Code you have tattooed on your arm.

Cost: $25, includes tiny, tiny plastic cups of boxed wine and at least three types of cheese, one possibly soft. Inclusion of fruit or crackers dependent on the number of attendees.

See, kids? That’s why getting into the right college is so important.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

randomness

2012-01-26T00:05:00.008-05:00

So here we are.

Today I serve up some odds and ends:

Will it ever be possible for any human male on the planet to watch the Golden Globe Awards and not make the obvious boob joke? Further, is it possible that he who makes said obvious boob joke actually thinks he is being clever and that no one else has come up with it before?

A friend of mine remarked that he’d had a dream about Glee, only without the music. I remarked that Glee without the music is just Saved By the Bell.

Regarding future presidential elections, one of two things is going to happen: either we’re going to drop all pretense and just make the race an NBC reality show that is a combination of Survivor and The Apprentice (imagine teams of candidates trying to sell the most cupcakes on a desert island - the dessert island challenge!), wherein the winner is selected because he or she ate the most bugs, gave good meeting with Trump, and/or didn’t get eaten by the others... or, being elected President will become a sentence handed down by the Supreme Court to the 100th guilty defendant of the election year. Because corporations are now people, thanks to the Citizens United ruling, expect Exxon Mobil to eventually become the 50th President and go out of business when it inevitably has a nervous breakdown.

There is nothing more disconcerting than a baby giving you the stink-eye.

There’s a red carpet pre-show at the Super Bowl? There is a red carpet pre-show at the Super Bowl? A red carpet pre-show. At the Super Bowl? ...I’m sorry, what?

For all the lovelorn souls who crave the chocolatey goodness of Valentine’s Day but don’t wish to face the embarrassment of buying one’s own heart-shaped box of sweets, here’s a tip: Nutella is delicious candy in a jar, yet somehow considered an ordinary supermarket item. Just add spoon and you’ve got a fabulous night ahead. You’re welcome.

Okay, getting back to that ridiculous red carpet at the Super Bowl thing... if they’re going to do it, then they should really do it: have fans like, say, Joey Ruggazzio from Bayonne walk the carpet with his painted face and oversized fleece in front of the photogs and interviewers, saying, Yeah, these dungarees are from my closet, I got these shoes in ’97, this is my lucky knit hat my Ma custom made me, and the handbag is from Macy’s.

Milkshakes are delightful, but all too temporary.

Okay, for the last time: if you are in Contestant’s Row on The Price is Right, and you want to bid one dollar, it only works if you are the last one to bid. If you are the third one to bid and you bet one dollar, don’t look all shocked when the last person bids two dollars. I recently saw someone bid one dollar when she was the first one to bid. Sigh. Society is in bigger trouble than we think.

It’s a shame that my career involves singing, because whenever a photo is taken of me mid-song, I look like Buddy Hackett.

Maybe I’m late to the party, and maybe it’s just the middle-age talking, but one of my new favorite things is this heating pad that goes around your neck and shoulders. Everyone should have one. Everyone. Forget the one-laptop-per-child initiatives. Those only keep your lap hot.

It’s interesting to walk around the city this time of year and look carefully at people’s faces. If they look miserable and stressed, it means they’re still keeping their New Year’s resolutions. The ones who’ve already said to hell with this damned detox look much more relaxed.

Finally, I think it’s time that we all acknowledged that a woodchuck can indeed chuck wood, and how much of it he chucks is none of our damned business. It’s time for a new vocal exercise. Perhaps it should be: Nine pine nuts in a pine nut pie makes a pie with nine pine nuts. I just made that up, and now I realize that whoever came up with how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood never got royalties for his work. And so here I am, givin' it away for free. Sigh again. I’ve officially wasted this tiny part of my life.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

stupid chicken

2012-01-21T00:15:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

It has been about six weeks since I turned 40.

This means that I am “over 40.” That is clear. I know this to be true. It sucks, but it is true. I have never been one to lie about my age, and I certainly have been more than forthcoming about it on this web...blah...log.

But it’s really hard to check a little box that reads +40.

When I go to commercial auditions (mostly voiceovers), there is a sign-in sheet where actors put down their respective names, agencies, direct contact info, and appointment/arrival times. Then there are little statistical boxes to check, mostly for the actor’s unions’ records, where one can mark their gender, race, and age... the only choices for age being -40 and +40.

Way back in my carefree -40 days, I would happily check off all of the pertinent boxes, but I would notice that certain actors would purposely leave all of the statistical boxes blank. Sometimes this is due to haste. Sometimes it’s because no one else has checked any of the boxes and it’s one of those oh, we’re not doing this today days. More often than not, however, it seemed that the people who did not admit to being either -40 or +40 were definitely +40 and just didn’t want to check the +40 box.

How silly, I would think to myself. It’s just a number. How vain these actors be.

Cut to six weeks ago when I suddenly, violently, went from being -40 to +40.

It was easy at first. Some sign-in sheets are different, depending on where your audition is, and there are no little -40 or +40 boxes to check off at all. You just write down your name and agency. There were a lot of those last month. And then came the holidays, with no auditions or sign-in sheets at all to deal with. And yes, there were a few auditions where I simply “forgot” to check off any of those statistical boxes. So what? I thought. Everyone forgets things.

But then, this week, I came to a crossroads.

It had been a long, cold day, and I entered an overheated building. I dumped my heavy bag, filled with my life, on a chair, then proceeded to remove three layers of outer vestments, scarf, gloves, and hat, and piled them all on top of the poor sad buckling chair, then signed in, blowing hair out of my dewey face. Name. Agency. Direct Contact. Appointment Time. Arrival Time. Statistical Boxes: Female, check. Caucasian, check.

Oh, crap.

I hadn’t left the boxes blank. And I was up to the -40/+40 boxes. The moment of truth.

All of the other gals there had checked -40, whether they were actually -40 or not. All those little -40 checks in a row...

And this is where I turned chicken. Horribly, embarrassingly, full-feathered poultry. I left that box blank. I couldn’t check the -40 box and lie, but I also couldn’t admit to being +40. I know. Just pathetic, right? If this was a 1960s Don Knotts movie, it would be The Ghost and Mr. Me.

But it gets worse. Later, upon leaving the audition, I realized that not only was I a giant chicken, but that I was a stupid one as well... because if you’re going to fill in everything else but leave the -40/+40 boxes blank, it doesn’t take a bloody rocket scientist to figure out that you’re +40.

I checked the box without actually checking the box. How’s that for a stupid chicken?

And I thought I only played them on TV. (...in Muppet form, that is.)

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

got mlk?

2012-01-16T17:20:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

Today, I found myself incredibly puzzled by something:

When did Martin Luther King Day become known as MLK Day?

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. won a Nobel Peace prize at 35. He was a pivotal figure in American culture and the civil rights movement. He spoke for those who could not speak for themselves, the ones who had been oppressed and silenced by the hoses and the dogs and the ropes, and he himself was arrested dozens of times in the name of justice, equality, and peace.

So really, for the love of muffins, is everyone seriously now calling it MLK Day? They’re just throwing it off like that? Really? That’s what it’s come to? The casual text-ification of absolutely everything and everyone?

Sure, I understand how handy and necessary abbreviations can be in the Twitterverse, textland, and URL-ville. But I’m even hearing people use that abbreviation when they’re speaking, including news anchors. Are you telling me that people suddenly can’t spare two extra syllables? Are they on some sort of time crunch? Are they afraid they’re going to be played off by an imaginary orchestra, like an actor accepting an Oscar? (By the by, no one used acronyms or abbreviations in their Golden Globes speeches last night, where they would have surely come in handy since almost everyone went over their allotted time.)

Turning a name into initials is the sort of thing that a franchise does to make itself seem younger and hipper. Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC. Saturday Night Live became SNL.

But this is not chicken or sketch comedy. This is a historical figure.

And yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was called FDR and John F. Kennedy was called JFK in their respective lifetimes, but did you ever hear anyone refer to Dr. King as MLK before now?

I have a feeling that it’s really not about the abbreviation, but rather about making something sound cuter. I never understood why society decided that a rather horrific day in American history would be forever referred to as 9/11 rather than September 11th. It seems so... I don’t know... Catchy? Branded? Important things like that shouldn’t fall prey to the sort of savvy positioning we reserve for soda pop and potato chips.

Even the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that leads various service organizations in the country and was essentially charged with leading the efforts of the Martin Luther King Day of Service, refers to it as MLK Day on their website.

Is it to reach a generation of young ones who have grown up with Bennifers and Li-Los? Is there a need to give the man a newer, hipper moniker? And does this mean we should re-brand other important historical figures in American and world history for the sake of hipness?

If so, I’m just waiting for:

Winston Churchill = Churchy Wins

Abraham Lincoln = Blink 16

Napoleon Bonaparte = Lil’ Leon

Even the aforementioned presidents already known by their acronyms can be taken a step further:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) = F. Doctor

John F. Kennedy (JFK) = J. FuK

See kids? That’s why you don’t try to change the world. You’ll just end up with a hideous nickname.

(Now I have to go wash the sarcasm off. Seriously kids, please try to change the world... and make it a better world, not a “everyone has to be on Facebook or else” world.)

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

analog sandwich aside

2012-01-12T00:15:00.003-05:00

So here we are.

One of the comments from my last post -- “secret” -- was from a friend who mentioned that he prefers not to follow people who use their 140 characters to type mindless asides on their sandwiches. I don’t intentionally follow sandwich-tweeters, either... but the sentiment echoed something I’d written in one of my Playbill.com guest-blogs from August 2010, wherein I suspected that the real reason the Library of Congress was archiving tweets was for the preservation of sandwich history, as Twitter posts (and Facebook status updates) often tend towards sandwich-centricity. Not even the brightest, smartest, and funniest tweeters are completely immune to it.

It begs the question: did we always care this much about sandwiches? Or is sandwich obsession purely a byproduct of the Internet?

This, along with my currently being immersed in Downton Abbey, inspired the following attempt at polite chuckle-inducing... my imagining of how this all began:

March 22, 1912

My dearest Hattie,

It is a lovely day here in Shropshavington-On-Surris, and my thoughts, as always, turn to you.

As I relay to you this update on my status, I want to share with you an occurrence of extraordinary stature that commenced this noontime.

When Cambridge brought up my luncheon today, I expected a dreary retelling of last evening’s roast, by way of a tiresome stew. What he placed before me, however, is worthy of sonnets and love songs.

Twas a simple sandwich, my love, but O! The meats and cheeses! The hearty, rustic, fragrant bread! It was as ample as your bosom, my darling, and dare I say nearly as sweet.

Bite after bite, the angels sang, my dearest. They sang like the wind sings in your hair on a summer’s day. With each clamping of my jaw, there was a new burst of deliciousness. Never had textures mingled with flavors in this way. Never had my tongue been so excited. Never had my lips been kissed by such a mélange of mastication. I blushed a woman’s blush.

I must mention to you the bacon. It danced with its meat brothers across my taste buds as the cheese and bread melted and melded into magic. I threw my fork across the room in an explosion of joy. Cambridge replaced it, of course. He is a good lad.

Lady mine, indeed I find myself questioning everything I ever knew about the world order. We scoff at the humble pig, that wallowing beast, throwing it our insults and feeding it our slop, when in fact its miraculous flavours demand that we should bow before it. Simply because a creature rolls low on the ground in life hardly makes it lesser upon roasting. Geese may soar gracefully above us, but goose is ever so gamey.

O, my darling Hattie, my love, if only you could have experienced a single crumb of this repast! It pains me so to think that all I can share with you are my insufficient words.

Still, words are powerful. Perhaps someday the world will advance such that the mighty sandwich will reign supreme and be the subject of many missives. Perhaps there will come a time when sandwiches will be mused upon and upon and upon, until the ink wells run dry, until the pen nib is worn to a nub, until the typewriter ribbons are shredded and their hammers flattened.

O! What a happy time that shall be.

But we are men, mortal and flawed, and prone to overindulging our desires in every way. Alas, I foresee a distant foreboding future, a hundred years from now, when such sandwich odes and reflections indeed choke the air, becoming so ample and prolific that they deteriorate and rot into brief, mindless asides that are only a handful of words long. They will be thrown into the sky like so many little birds, flittering and twittering, and they will not be meant to celebrate the sandwich, but rather to celebrate and draw attention to its consumer.

But surely, with God in His heaven, that horrible day will never come.

Your loving,

Edward

Now that’s long-form smartassery!

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

secret

2012-01-08T00:15:00.007-05:00

So here we are.

I have a secret to share with you devoted dozens:

I’m on Twitter. Sort of.

Hang on there, cowboys... I’m on Twitter, but I’m not me. I decided that in order to truly just dip a toe in the social networking waters, I should fly under the radar, so I have a completely made up name. Don’t bother looking. You won’t find it. It’s a name that is unrelated to anything or anyone you may have ever associated with me, my career, or this blog.

And it’s not necessary to look for me anyway, since I have not sent out a single tweet yet, and probably won’t, ever. I’m purely a follower. I can’t even think of what I would possibly want to wink-wink.

You read that right: wink-wink.

That’s really what all of the tweets I’ve seen so far appear to be: wink-winks. With the exception of news headlines and food truck locations, they’re all one-liners, one-uppers, gotchas, ha-has, clever bitchings, ass-smoochings, aren’t-I-wittys, cries for attention, desperate fame-graspings, over-sharings, wannabe stand-up-esque observations, and self-deprecations that are somehow also self-adulating, all covered with a thick layer of I-know-what-I’m-doing-and-am-better-than-you. And because of that thick layer, my freshly-coined collective term for all of this bite-sized smartassery is wink-winks.

And don’t get me started on the hashtags:

#HashtagLongerThanTweet

#BettingNoOneElseThoughtOfThisOhSoCleverHashtag

#PunchlineLoveMePlease

See, I prefer my smartassery served up in as many words as is bloggingly possible. As such, I remain a silent follower of others’ tweets and wink-winks, me with an anonymous egg for a face, just like the millions of other subdued egg-faces on Twitter.

And yet I had a follower within five minutes of signing up.

I now have five followers. For a hot second I had eight, plus several others who’ve come and gone one by one because I didn’t follow them back. I know exactly none of these people.

Comparison: I have fourteen official followers (not counting email subscribers, for which I have no real number) on this seventeen month-old web...blah...log, a blog that I have poured countless hours of my soul into. I have five followers on a two week-old, practically stagnant Twitter account with no discernible personality, a one-line bio, and a made-up name.

And you wonder why I shake my fist and tell Facebook to get off my lawn.

Of course, as I see my followers unfollow me, I still find myself thinking, hey... why are you leaving me, other than the fact that I clearly have a made up name and haven’t said anything yet and also you’re probably just a spammer who wants me to follow you and click on your toxic links?

And then I think, maybe if I tried to wink-wink just once...

And then I slap myself, NO! Don’t do this! You’ll fall into the pit of needing to be followed and constantly trying way too hard to be witty, and the hashtags, those scars of Satan, will never stop! Never! You’ll find yourself watching bad TV just so you can choke the feeds with your lame observations, like: Watching #WorkIt premiere on #ABC, even the #CannedLaughTrack isn’t buying #HideousExecutionOfOldHatPremise. #HowIMissScolari&Hanx #LuvMePls

And then I need a nap. No wink-winks my own for now... just the endless wink-winks of everyone else, which is more than enough.

Damn you, Web 2.0. Between birds that tweet and birds that are angrily flung at pigs, I am even further trapped in your suckage of time.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

pointing fingers

2012-01-04T00:23:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

I am so angry at my pants. They have rebelled for some unknown reason and refuse to do what pants should do.

Gotta blame someone. That’s what we do, right? When we get bad news, or something goes awry or amiss... we point the finger at someone or something else. Because it can’t possibly be my fault.

It had to be the Ronnybrook egg nog. When a beverage is the consistency of face cream, you just know that there’s going to be a price paid down the road. It just leapt into that glass and begged me to drink it. Begged. And during the holidays, what sort of inhumane monster would I be to deny the needy?

Or maybe it was the cookies. Those little bastards. They cornered me in that dark alley and told me we were going to go get a salad. Suffice it to say, you cannot trust cookies.

Nor can you trust hot chocolate that is actually molten pudding in disguise... and it’s not like you can stop imbibing when you realize the truth about it.

Of course, candy is also a possible culprit. How dare it go on sale. How dare it!

And then there were all those lovely dinners that looked a lot smaller when they were illuminated only by candlelight and a Christmas tree. Plus, I always assumed that food you couldn’t see didn’t actually count. Not to mention that when butter melts into that hot roll, it seems to disappear... wreaking havoc on the thighs of a distracted diner.

You know who’s looking pretty durned guilty right now? Tradition. The tradition of warm cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning and New Year’s Day. The tradition of ordering chocolate covered pretzels from home every December. The tradition of saying, what the hell? It’s the holidays! And later, rats, the holidays are over and it’s cold and dark and I require cake.

In the end (heaven help me if I insert no pun intended here), I am choosing to blame the pants themselves. Bad, bad pants. They don’t deserve to be worn for a while. That’ll teach ‘em.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

next year

2011-12-31T00:37:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

I have not yet read either of the Stephen Sondheim books that dissect his lyrics (Finishing the Hat and Look I Made a Hat), nor am I a savant when it comes to his work, but I don’t think I am creating any great controversy in declaring that his most poignant lyric is probably this one, from A Little Night Music: the last line of the song Send in the Clowns:

Well, maybe next year.

We all find ourselves confronted with those words: maybe next year. They first come from our parents: maybe next year we’ll get a dog, maybe next year you’ll get that train set, maybe next year we’ll go to Disneyland. Later they come from all of the teachers, coaches, and other authority figures in our lives: maybe next year you’ll do better/make the team/win the race.

Eventually, they come from within ourselves, in a thousand inner monologues:

Maybe next year I’ll be taller. Thinner. Prettier. Better. Maybe next year I’ll have that job. Maybe next year my dreams will come true. Maybe next year I’ll find that Someone. Maybe next year I’ll find all of those lovely and perfect things that are just out of reach... all of the things that I ache for and all of the things that will mend me. Maybe. Next year.

You can hear it all over the world tonight, in billions of resolutions that reek of cheap Champagne and stale desperation.

But while the promise of next year may be glossy and beautiful, it’s really just sugar glass: brittle, and so easily broken. That dog, that train set, that trip to Disneyland... they were never really going to happen. Maybe next year was just a way for Mom and Dad to delay the inevitable.

Even the most determined vows made on December 31 tend to dissolve by February, and somewhere deep down, we know this as we hoist a glass to all of the maybes that the coming year will bring.

Maybe next year...

...but probably not. Probably never.

We know this because we got through all of last year. (That is a different Sondheim lyric from a different show, and for a different time.)

As such, I have learned not to give my heart over to Next Year. It is not up to a single striking of the clock, or the turning of a calendar page to make us new and shiny. We can do that any time we like. We just have to do it now, whenever that now may be. And maybe we don’t need to be new and shiny. Maybe we just need to keep on keepin’ on.

This is not a damnation of hope. This is different. This is saying, you know what? The clowns aren’t gonna be sent in. Not this year, not next year, not any year. It’s time to move on.

And yes, I know the song isn’t about clowns. So shut up, Internet.

In spite of the contents of this post and without any hint of sarcasm, I do sincerely hope that you all find joy, peace and prosperity in the coming year.

Screw the clowns.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

bowl

2011-12-27T00:08:00.004-05:00

So here we are.

This week, my dear Northwestern University is playing in the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas. I probably won’t be watching. It’s not because we won’t have access to the game -- cable allows us to see colleges we never knew existed play everything from water polo to tetherball. And it’s not because I’m ignorant about football -- I was a kid in Pittsburgh, PA during the Steel Curtain/Immaculate Reception days.

It’s because I refuse to watch lamely named bowls.

I grant you, the horse is indeed out of the barn when it comes to sponsorship of all things once considered sacred. In fact, there are many things that I’m surprised haven’t had the bumper sticker of commerce slapped on them yet: I fully expected, in the disastrous wake of Hurricane Katrina, for the city to be renamed Pepsi Presents New Orleans.

And I am well aware that things are different now, in this everyone-gets-a-trophy era, and that the number of “championship games” is increasing to an embarrassingly large degree.

But couldn’t they come up with a better name for this damn bowl? Just to pretend that it was something real? Like the Engine Bowl? Or the Internal Combustion Bowl? Or even the Vroom Vroom Bowl? Sure, I know that Meineke wants to get its money’s worth, but their name doesn’t have to be in the bowl title if the stadium is already going to be plastered with their logo and ads.

Of course, there are plenty of other corporate sponsored bowls, with other uninspired names, and I’m waiting for someone to realize the obvious-but-at-least-sort-of-cute Splenda Sugar (Substitute) Bowl. But I fear that the slippery slope of unabashed ridiculousness coupled with the slow demise of satire... and sprinkled with a hearty dose of a robust 1% and decreasing regulation, will lead to future bowls with names like:

the Rick Perry PAC Bowl

the Wal-Mart Gun and Bedding Departments Family Funtime Bowl

the My Kids Aren’t Getting a Dime From Me Now Bowl

the Suck It Harry Flickman, You May Have My Wife But I Have Enough Money to Sponsor a Bowl Game Bowl

and of course:

the Twitter Bowl @TwitterBowl #twitterbowlforfootballnottweets #we understandhowthenamemightconfuseyou

That last one is probably going to happen someday, but even the others won’t seem all that outlandish when we finally declare satire dead. Just remember, Harry Flickman,* you heard it here first, so stay away from married women.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

*I don’t know any Harry Flickmans. It just sounded like a good name.

a little gift

2011-12-23T00:06:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

Seeing as tomorrow is Christmas Eve, it’s appropriate that I give you devoted dozens a little gift.

Last year, I gave you a Christmas warning, in the form of an original poem. For those of you who missed it, I’m happy to share it again:

Warning

If your meat’s in a mound

And your french fries are drowned

And your chocolate fudge sundaes

Are whipped cream crowned

Then it shouldn’t astound

If you gain a pound

And a pound and a pound

Until you are round

This year, I’m giving you some classic comedy in the form of a YouTube link.

I always think of Jack Benny at this time of year. Not just because he passed away on December 26, 1974, but also because the Christmas episodes of his radio show were so memorable.

In radio and the early days of television, there was no such thing as reruns, so some programs would occasionally re-perform popular scripts. In the case of The Jack Benny Program, the writers would create story lines that would be re-performed, but that would also vary slightly from episode to episode. If Jack was going on a trip and taking the train, you could always count on the same hijinks occurring at the station: him encountering Sheldon Leonard’s racing tout or Frank Nelson’s annoying ticket agent, or hearing the announcement of a train departing for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cu-----camonga. People came to expect these episodes and loved them, even though they knew what was coming. It’s kind of like when Letterman does his annual holiday show with Jay Thomas knocking the meatball off the tree and telling the same Clayton Moore story, and Darlene Love’s reliably awesome Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).

Anyway, every December, there would be an episode where Jack Benny would go Christmas shopping (often with Mary Livingston), run into all or most of the other characters on the show, but mostly puzzle as to what to buy for his announcer, Don Wilson. Cheapskate Jack would decide on an item (say, shoelaces) and then constantly flip-flop between getting the laces with plastic tips or metal tips. This would ultimately drive the clerk, always played by Mel Blanc, to insanity.

Every year there was a slightly different version of this script. One year, Jack was torn between watercolor paints and oil paints. Another year, the gift was golf tees (wood or plastic). One memorable year, the poor clerk begged to be transferred to Palm Springs so he didn’t have to run into “that crazy guy,” only to find that Jack was vacationing there... and this time puzzling over whether to buy plain dates or dates stuffed with nuts for Don.

When The Jack Benny Program moved to television, they did do one Christmas shopping episode, and this is the link I am gifting to you this year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvZI-TlSso

It’s a link because I didn’t post it myself.

This episode has become a holiday tradition for me and my husband, and I hope that you enjoy it. Even if you’ve never heard of Jack Benny, I think you will have fun, especially seeing the great Frank Nelson (yyyyeeee-esss?), and the incomparable Mel Blanc go toe to toe with Jack. And for those of you who think that “old” shows are so much milder and lamer than today’s fare, just hang on until the ending.

And if you like this, do yourself a favor and explore the Internet for more, especially the radio shows. It’s dated, yes, but the character comedy is timeless.

Happy Merry, everyone!

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

giving

2011-12-17T00:30:00.021-05:00

So here we are.

Ah, it’s that time of year. The time of year when the world is filled with festive joy and the spirit of giving.

It’s also the time of year when jackasses blog about crappy gifts you better not give to anyone, especially them.

Okay. I get it. We live in a freakish time, where How the Grinch Stole Christmas still airs, telling us about how Christmas doesn’t come from a store, only to get interrupted by that horrible music that reminds us to make it a Lexus December to Remember. And it seems like every product, no matter how mundane, attempts to become repositioned as a possible Christmas present, from toothbrushes to lottery tickets. At the same time, some magazines suggest diamond earrings as perfect “stocking stuffers.” And the whole world is split right down the middle on the concept of gift cards; half calling them thoughtful, the other half consider them gauche. It’s insane and inane, and I get that. I do.

I also get how disappointing a bad gift can be. But it’s a gift. It’s something you didn’t have before. And even if it’s something really lousy, like electric scissors (which yes, I have unwrapped), you say thank you, swig your nog and move on with your life.

But I recently read a blog post about 5 of the stupidest gifts to receive, and while it irked me a little to see iPods on that list (even if you have one, iPods break or get upgraded constantly), the one that really got to me was “anything intangible.” This included charity.

Charity.

Yes, the author made it clear that he didn’t want to get a star named after him, or have an animal adopted for him. His words: Don’t you know Christmas is about stuff?

Sigh.

I guess it’s a good thing that this guy isn’t the chick in The Gift of the Magi, or we’d see comments like this:

DellaPrincess: Gah! Got a freaking hair comb. A comb. Can you believe it? Good thing I decided not to sell my hair to get Mister Della a watch chain, because apparently the dumbass hocked his watch. Cheap bastard.

See, with very few exceptions, charity and candy have recently become my two go-to gifts. There are reasons for this. I’d love to give music or movies, but it’s impossible to know what people already have, and since the only way to play it safe is with the divisive gift card, I’ve given up on that. Books are the same story.

This is where candy comes in. Candy is delicious, especially if it’s good candy, and even if people already have it, they don’t mind having some more. And if for some reason they don't like it, they can easily share it with others. You do have to be careful with good candy, however, if you are giving on a budget. I was in a show where the cast was given excellent chocolates on opening night, but the understudies were given much smaller boxes... with just one piece inside. Ouch.

Apart from all that, though, I know that most of the people I’m giving to have a lot of stuff, just as I have a lot of stuff. It’s hard to find stuff that people who have a lot of stuff are in need of, or don’t already have. At the same time, there are a lot of people who have nothing. Not no stuff, I mean nothing. And while I like receiving candy, I know I’d prefer seeing someone who has nothing get a little bit of joy much more than seeing my ass just get wider. That's a win-win for all.

Maybe it comes from age, or seeing my living space shrink from trying to cram so much lovely crap into it, but I’m sort of done with stuff. Sure, I still consume plenty (my skin now requires an arsenal of products, and I do have a wide selection of mary jane pumps), but I’m not as charmed by meaningless and random trinkets as I once was, especially when I see what’s going on with the rest of the country and the world. (The key words are meaningless and random, mind you.)

I guess there was a time, back in childhood, when Christmas was indeed about stuff. But if everyday capitalism and consumerism is already about stuff, then what is it, exactly, that makes Christmas special?

Of course, this is just me. Live your life the way you like. But at the very least, try to live it with grace and gratitude.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

irregularity (not that kind)

2011-12-13T00:06:00.002-05:00

So here we are.

I don’t read many other blogs regularly, but one that I do check out every now and then is By Ken Levine. He writes mostly about Hollywood (he lives in L.A.), TV (he’s worked on a giant crop of wildly popular sitcoms), film (he co-wrote several screenplays), baseball (he’s a major league announcer) and popular culture in general (the only other thing that writers in L.A. think about besides baseball). Basically, he writes the kind of stuff I do, only better and with a lot more baseball. As such, it’s a pretty durned entertaining way to procrastinate.

In the waning days of HoLoBloMo, By Ken Levine turned 6. He referred to it as a blog anniversary. A commenter spelled it blogoversary. I contend that it should be blog-iversary. But I’m not here to coin a term. (Not really, anyway.)

Ken wrote that when he started his blog, he was given the advice that he should post something new every day, so people would keep coming back and he would build an audience. This nearly cowed him, but six years later, he’s not only churning out a daily blog, he often posts twice a day.

And there I was, acting all hoo-dee-hoo about oh, look at me and my HoLoBloMo! Amateur, I. Total amateur.

(Hoo-dee-hoo is also mine, Internet. I use it instead of la-dee-dah.)

It stands to reason that someone like Ken Levine can provide so much content. The guy has decades of expertise and anecdotes and advice. He answers questions every Friday about all of the things he writes about. He knows, or knew, just about every show biz veteran who rates a New York Times obituary and can probably come up with a post just by flipping channels on cable and finding an old friend. Granted, I was able to wring eight posts out of less than three months at Burger King, but no one wants to hear advice about being semi-employed.

If I were to try to be like Ken Levine and field questions, it would probably go like this:

QWERTY asks:

I want to be an actor. Do you have any advice?

Run. Run away as fast and as far as you can. Unless you are beautiful. Then all you have to do is stand there and wait.

DRUSILLA asks:

How do actors cope with unemployment?

The good thing about unemployment is that you don’t have to get dressed every day, which cuts way down on your laundry bills.

JILLY asks:

What’s it like to be on a New York stage?

Like being on any other stage, only with Teamsters.

I kid, I kid. Most of my answers would probably be, Ummmm... cookies are good. No matter what the question.

They say that you should only eat when you’re hungry. So I’m going to only post when I have something to say, whenever it may be. It may be more often, it may be less. I have no idea. Sure, I’d love to have Ken Levine’s audience... but I’m a believer in quality, not quantity, and you devoted dozens are truly faboo.

Plus, I still don’t get that whole infield fly rule thing.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

lame but true

2011-12-09T00:04:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

Did you ever have something happen to you that seemed like a lame plot line in a lame sitcom? Something that was only funny because it was pathetic, and even the word funny is too complimentary to describe it? Something where the timing of the events seemed just a little too perfectly pat to be real?

Did you ever have something happen to you that, when compared to the plights and tragedies that plague the rest of the world, seems petty and shallow to even mention but nonetheless needs to be shared because of its sheer ridiculousness? Something that might make people feel sorry for you; not because of what happened, but because you felt the need to tell the silly story? Something that perhaps would feel at home in a Ziggy comic?

Guess what? I did.

Sprinkles Cupcakes finally opened in New York this spring, and it made me very happy, as I became a fan from the few tastes I’d had of them when visiting Los Angeles, and I’ve grown weary of the subpar, fad-driven cupcakes that give the entire small frosted baked goods genre a bad name.

I have spent many days and dollars there. But it was all good, worth every penny and calorie. I discovered the miracle that is the ginger lemon cupcake. I even made a new friend, named cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

And then, out of the blue, Sprinkles started a birthday club! You can sign up online and get a free cupcake on your birthday! Wow!

And guess when they started it? The day after my birthday.

Maybe it’s more like a Cathy comic than Ziggy. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the unholy spawn of Cathy and Ziggy.

*shudder*

So that’s what they mean by the love that dare not speak its name. They mean Cathy and Ziggy.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

at 40

2011-12-07T00:30:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

Today, I am officially middle-aged. I hate it. Of course, I also hate that I hate it, because that just makes me seem like a great big cliché. Thank God I don’t drink much, because the thought of adding a giant glass of wine to the picture is just too damned stereotypical to bear.

There are pluses, of course. I can justify going to a schmancy restaurant tonight. And I’m that much closer to the age where I can do or say anything I want just because I haven’t died yet.

People ask what I want for my birthday, but I can’t think of any stores that carry reversal of gravity or a sensible Congress.

I truly don’t remember all 40 of my birthday wishes, but if I did, I bet they would go something like this:

At birth: I wish I knew what was going on here.

At 1: I wish I could talk in complete sentences.

At 2: I wish I had all my teeth.

At 3: I wish I could live in the TV with all the happy people.

At 4: I wish I could go to Disneyland.

At 5: I wish I could eat ice cream every day.

At 6: I wish I could fly.

At 7: I wish that math wasn’t stupid.

At 8: I wish I could get my ears pierced.

At 9: I wish Santa Claus was real.

At 10: I wish I was old enough to be taken seriously.

At 13: I wish I could get that boy to like me.

At 15: I wish I was old enough to drive.

At 18: I wish I was old enough to drink.

At 20: I wish I could figure out what I want to do with my life.

At 22: I wish I was old enough to rent a car.

At 25: I wish I could repay my student loans.

At 30: I wish I was 25.

At 35: I wish I was 30.

At 40: I wish I could eat ice cream every day.

Crap. Now it won’t come true.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

comment reply ("underneath")

2011-12-01T12:40:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

You didn’t expect to see me again so soon, did you? You thought I’d be on the floor in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, whispering, holoblomo... holoblomo...

But I just got a comment on one of my recent Horribly Local Blogging Month posts, and I wanted to share it with you, as well as my (edited and augmented) response to it, since I’m sure nobody out there subscribes to the comments. It was regarding “holoblomo day 26: underneath,” which, I am amazed to say, is now my most-read post in the history of web...blah...log.

Here’s the comment, verbatim, from George:

An interesting discussion, but I recall an old interview from Jim Henson that he made it a point to maintain the "illusion" of the characters being separate from their actors (puppeteers) as much as possible. So this seems to be a continuation of his desire on this course.

Take a look at the Kermit appearances on the Tonight Show (with Johnny Carson)... most were just "Kermit", occasionally "Kermit and Jim Henson" (but NOT "Jim Henson as Kermit", these were instances where the two actually appeared as unique guests that interacted with each other)... or look at the list of guest hosts of the Tonight Show, you will see a listing for "Kermit and Miss Piggy", but no mention of "Jim Henson and Frank Oz".

Yes, maybe in the modern age it's a bit "too cute" to treat muppets as real characters, interviewing them on morning shows and radio talk shows and red carpets, but the world is pretty short of "cute" these days.

George, I appreciate your thoughtful comments on this.

I think there is a big difference between the Muppets appearing on talk shows, where they should indeed be treated as unique, individual characters, and an actor's performance in a film or television narrative. Of course the Muppet characters are real entities. That's what makes them special. I would never deny the characters their identities, and I think it’s crucial to maintain their integrity. Whenever Piggy showed up on Regis, I would never expect nor want Regis to pull Frank or Eric up off the floor to say, "Let's give this guy a hand!" And I don't even care if the puppeteer's names don't show up in those talk show credits. That's a different thing entirely.

Hell, when I was I was doing all of the press for Avenue Q back in the day, even though you could clearly see me operating Kate Monster, I never allowed Kate to say she was a puppet and I was her puppeteer. I was just someone who followed her around for some reason. For the sake of the narrative of the musical and the integrity of the character, she was a monster, not a puppet. She didn’t have legs, and she knew it, but still, she was a monster. It was vital for us to keep the characters real, even when you saw us performing them. Kate and the other Q characters were only referred to as puppets during things like the skits in the Broadway Cares Easter Bonnet Competition benefit, as a means of lampooning the show (as all the Broadway shows do in the name of fun and charity). Again, entirely different.

I'm talking about credit for the films. Jim Henson's name was on those movie posters along with the other Muppet Performers in all of the other Muppet movies, and even when the characters' names showed up on The Muppet's Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island posters, the puppeteers' names did as well. And the characters were only listed because Kermit, Piggy, et al were technically "playing" other characters - cute, yes, but in an appropriate way.

And you're right - Jim Henson was indeed adamant in protecting the integrity of the characters (as are all of the Muppet Performers), but that didn't mean he couldn't show or discuss the goings-on behind the scenes in specials and documentaries about The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and The Jim Henson Hour. It didn't make the characters any less magical or cute, and it didn't ruin the illusion when they would turn around the next day and appear on the Today Show.

Also, Jim Henson, when talking to Johnny Carson, or Mike Douglas, or Michael Parkinson, would always acknowledge the work of the puppeteers, and talk about Frank Oz's performances as Miss Piggy, Bert and Fozzie. I'm not going to attempt to get into Jim Henson's head, but all evidence points to him making sure the public knew who was ultimately responsible for bringing those characters to life, and that includes the builders, workshop folk and writers as well.

I believe - and again, not trying to get into his head - his comments about keeping the puppeteer separate from the character meant that Kermit wasn't going to look down and start talking to Jim, or talk about Jim in interviews. You'll note that the few times this is brought up (The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson, Henson's Place, or when Jim Henson was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame), and the characters are asked about Jim Henson, it's handled delicately, but never overtly. The puppeteer and character weren't intended to have the sort of relationship that say, a ventriloquist would.

George mentioned Kermit guest-hosting the Tonight Show in 1979 and the billing in that situation. This is true. However, in viewing that tape -- and this is not meant to be a snarky one-upping -- I found that while there are no credits for the Muppet Performers in the crawl, as the show ends and the credits roll, Kermit (as performed by Jim) does give a vocal shout-out to "all the guys under the Muppets" and rattles off all of their names (except his own). He prized these guys. He wanted them to get at least some recognition whenever he could, and always when it was appropriate to do so.

I hope George -- and anyone else who might have taken issue with my original post -- understands the distinction I was trying to make here. We all care very deeply for these characters, and no one is trying to take away from them, or make a name for his or her self by wanting the same kind of basic recognition afforded to other fellow SAG and AFTRA members when they take on a role.

I’ll leave it to Fozzie and Kermit in the opening titles of The Great Muppet Caper to finish the point:

Fozzie: Nobody reads those names anyway, do they?

Kermit: Sure. They all have families.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 30: holoblomo no mo'

2011-11-30T00:30:00.002-05:00

So here we are.

I guess that’s it. Horribly Local Blogging Month - or HoLoBloMo - is finally at an end. With this post, I have met my challenge of writing a daily post throughout November and hitting 10,000 words, and since I hit 13,612 words yesterday, I did it with at least a 36% word bonus to boot.

Have we learned anything?

I’ve learned that chest colds can take an entire month to run their course. But I suppose that lesson would have been learned regardless of HoLoBloMo.

And... hmm. I can’t think of anything else I learned that I didn’t already know.

Wow. Maybe nothing has been learned. Well, let’s look at the tote board:

Number of posts from October 31, 2010-October 31, 2011: 66

Number of posts from November 1, 2011-November 30, 2011: 30

So, wow. HoLoBloMo produced almost half a year’s worth of posts... and more important, half a year’s worth of topics to write about. No wonder my muse seems out of breath and looks like crap.

Number of words from October 31, 2010-October 31, 2011: 50,082 (an average of 4173 words a month)

Number of words from November 1-November 29, 2011: 13,612

Okay. Now it seems a bit lamer, but HoLoBloMo still brought you around 3.25 months’ worth of words. But it’s quality, not quantity, right?

Weight fluctuation between October 31, 2010-October 31, 2011: gained and lost and gained a few pounds

Weight fluctuation between November 1-November 30, 2011: lost 3 pounds

This may have had less to do with HoLoBloMo and more to do with my cold and all of the tea I have subsequently been tossing down my gullet, but so far it’s the most impressive statistic.

Even with the weight loss factor, I don’t know if I could do another HoLoBloMo next year. Oh, sure, I do love how catchy HoLoBloMo sounds, and it’s been good to challenge myself. But for all of the time, effort, and energy I put into it, I’m not sure how valuable my final product is. I just have a lot more of the same things I always write, and now they’re all old and archived. Maybe next November I should aim a little higher.

I’m still not going to tackle NaNoWriMo, but maybe I could create Horribly Local Monologue Month (HoLoMoMo) or Horribly Local Short Story Month (HoLoShoStoMo)... I could even really shake it up and try to write a full length play in 30 days, but the catchiest name I could come up with for that -- November Drama-Comedy Month (NoDra-CoMo) -- sounds more like a TV network promo during sweeps.

And as we all know, a catchy name is everything.

Anyway, a huge thanks to all of you who took the daily ride with me. Exit to the right of the vehicle, and make sure you haven’t left any personal items behind.

And that’s a grand total of 14,091 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 29: f-word

2011-11-29T00:30:00.002-05:00

So here we are.

I know you don’t expect to hear this from an actor, but I don’t really want fame. Fame is a memorable film from 1980, a somewhat decent TV series, and a great Irene Cara song, but it is a hideous noun.

Famous is an equally hideous adjective. There are many things I want to be: employed, well-regarded, respected, lauded, professional, in-demand, a size zero... but not famous. It is way too exhausting. Even with the goody bags and free stuff, it’s not worth it. (Being way too exhausting is also the reason I am not a size zero.)

But you can’t have your cake and eat it too, and I suppose that also means you can’t be not-famous and still be a guest on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. Damn it.

I want to have a lovely chat with a host who’s actually seen the thing I’ve done or read the thing I’ve written. I want to sit across someone who throws out those blue cards and actually attempts to have a two-way conversation. I want to say hi to Geoff and the sweet little dirty rabbit and Secretariat. I want to laugh a genuine laugh. I want to tell Craig Ferguson that I actually own a previously-viewed copy of The Big Tease on DVD and see his reaction. I want to parry with someone who is smart and cynical and quick. And I want a free mouth organ.

So maybe I want to be juuuust famous enough to be on Craig Ferguson’s show. Would it be as hideous or exhausting as regular fame? Maybe. At the very least, it would probably still require very high, very pricey, and very uncomfortable red-soled heels, and starvation.

Hmmm... could be worth it... better start saving and starving...

And that’s 13,612 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 28: stupid grapevine

2011-11-28T00:30:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

Recently, I was told by someone I’d just met that he’d heard from people I’ve never met that I hated someone.

This struck me as odd. Not only do I not hate the person in question, but apparently total strangers are out there somewhere talking about my relationship with this person. Only, I don’t really have a close relationship with this person. I know this person and he knows me, but we’ve never had a conversation that’s lasted longer than a few minutes and we’ve had exactly one email exchange. I have a good deal of respect for this person, and if anything, I’m not sure how fond he is of me. But none of that actually matters.

Because I don’t hate people. Hate is a strong, dangerous word.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of things that I hate: intolerance, terrorism, irrationality, bullying, fear-mongering, evil, profiting from plight, cilantro... but these are just concepts and objects. People bring about different feelings: pity for the pompous and toxic ones, concern and sad nostalgia for those who have shifted to the dark side, nod-and-smile tolerance for the desperate show-offs, frustration for those who have unabashedly wronged me, impatience for the stupid ones who should know better, and love for the lovely. And yes, there is dislike for a few who aren’t even truly a part of my life (and some of these aren’t so much people as they are corporations with poor customer service). But true hate doesn’t fit in there.

Maybe if we decided to reserve our hate exclusively for things like bedbugs and cancer instead of people, we’d be able to bridge our gaps and experience the teeniest bit of unity. And even if there are people out there who insist on hating people who are different from them, I think we can all join hands and get behind some universal hate for bedbugs and cancer. That’s got to be a small step towards some kind of world peace, right?

Seriously, though, if any of you have heard that I hate you, I most certainly do not. Random idiots must have either misconstrued something I said out of context, or outright made that crap up. I don’t know why. Maybe it was so they’d have something to tweet.

I strongly dislike that.

And that’s 13,309 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 27: face it

2011-11-27T00:30:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

When I was in high school, I came across an old movie on TV one day: Heaven Can Wait. Not Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty from 1978, but Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait with Don Ameche from 1943. Despite matching titles, the films are totally unrelated.

In that picture, Don Ameche dies at a ripe old age and heads down to Hell, only to be told he doesn’t belong there. Shocked by this, he recounts his life’s wicked ways, shown in flashback. The then-dashing Don Ameche aged about 40 years in that movie, thanks to the magic of Hollywood makeup... and somehow looked exactly the way he would wind up looking 40 years later in Trading Places.

This impressed me to no end. How could a makeup artist know exactly how Ameche’s face would age? Talent? Clairvoyance?

When I was in college, I was cast in a mainstage play where I portrayed a middle-aged estate sale agent. Since the show was crewed by students as part of their coursework, I was paired with a stagecraft major and her faculty advisor to create my character’s look. We talked hair (french twist) and nails (coral press-ons), and then the subject of aging makeup was broached. The advisor studied my face and said, Lift your eyebrows as far up as you can. I obliged.

Her brow furrowed. Wow, she said. You’re not going to have many forehead wrinkles when you get older.

I didn’t get it. What?

She explained to me that when I raised my brows, my forehead didn’t create many lines, therefore I probably wouldn’t have a lot of wrinkles there. I’d have some around my eyes, but not my forehead. So instead of creating wrinkles on my forehead, she’d create shadows there and add some mild crow’s feet.

Well, that seemed good to me. Until she said the following:

And I’ll give you jowls. Yeah. You’re probably going to get jowls.

This did not seem good to me. At all. But then I thought, come on... she doesn’t really know. She can’t see into the future. And it’s not the same as Don Ameche. That was Hollywood. This is college.

But here we are in the future, where I am almost the age of that character I played... and it is now clear to me that makeup artists are indeed talented, but definitely clairvoyant.

Damn it. It’s just like Don Ameche.

And that’s 12,921 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 26: underneath

2011-11-26T00:06:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

Something has been bothering me this week as I see all of the hoopla about the new Muppet movie. It has nothing to do with the actual film. It has to do with credits.

You may not notice anything missing from the film’s poster, or the reviews, or the music credits, but I do: the names of the Muppet Performers are not to be seen.

Yes, the puppeteers do get nice solo screen credits at the film’s end, as well they should (and as the Screen Actor’s Guild no doubt dictates). However, in the music credits, songs are performed by “Kermit” and “Miss Piggy” and “Walter,” not the actors who portrayed them. But if Jason Segel and Amy Adams happened to sing those songs, their actual names are listed, not their character names. So a music credit doesn’t say Performed by Jason Segel and Steve Whitmire, or Performed by Gary and Kermit; it says Performed by Jason Segel and Kermit.

Likewise, in the major reviews I’ve read, there is not a single mention of the puppeteers, even though they are certainly giving reviewable performances. And none of the Muppet Performers’ names are on the movie poster.

I know these guys, and as a Muppet Performer myself, I know exactly what it is they do. They are actors, and the only difference between them and Jason Segel is that you don’t see their faces. They do what any actor does: they bring a character to life. In this case, that character happens to be a puppet. Without them, the Muppets simply do not exist. Without them, the Muppets are pieces of cloth in a box.

But it’s more than that. Being a Muppet Performer is anything but easy. Say what you will about Hollywood’s biggest stars, but I’ll wager you that despite their formidable talents, not a one of them could just pick up a Muppet and do that job with as much grace and believability... or even do it at all.

You always hear big stars at press junkets when they do an animated feature, saying things like, oh, it was so hard! To act with just your voice! You can’t use your face, or your hands, or your body... it’s such an amazing acting exercise!

Well, imagine acting with just your voice while sweating under a heavy puppet, with your arm up in the air for hours on end, giving full expression to a character who has no facial muscles and no benefit of a skilled animator’s hand, and making it so three-dimensional that people believe this inanimate object with no legs or voice box is actually walking and talking.

I’m sorry, Meryl, but with all due respect and more, even you couldn’t do it.

And yet, the Muppet Performers are shoved into the shadows as if they don’t exist.

I always found it a backhanded compliment when people would ask me if I ever forgot that the puppet wasn’t real, and to this I would reply, I’m sorry, but I’m working too hard to forget that it’s not real. I get it, though. When you do your job well, it looks easy. Goodness knows that people like Jeter, Jordan, Astaire and Baryshnikov made it look easy. And that’s a sign of brilliance.

But for some reason, the brilliance of the Muppet Performers is kept a huge inexplicable secret. Some say, well, you want to maintain the magic, don’t you? Otherwise it would break the illusion, if you made a big deal about the performers instead of their characters.

Well, riddle me this: who voices Buzz Lightyear? Who voices Shrek? Does seeing a trailer where these actors are shown in the recording booth and animators are shown creating wire-frame renderings make the characters less real when you’re watching the movie? Of course not. And those actors’ names are splashed all over the posters and reviews.

In fact, side by side with reviews of The Muppets are reviews of Arthur Christmas, the new animated feature from Aardman. In the New York Times review of The Muppets, the cast is listed as such:

WITH: Jason Segel (Gary), Amy Adams (Mary), Chris Cooper (Tex Richman), Rashida Jones (Veronica), Jack Black (himself); and Walter, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, the Great Gonzo, Animal, Statler and Waldorf, Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, Sam Eagle, Rowlf the Dog, Scooter, and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem Band.

In the New York Times review of Arthur Christmas, the cast is listed thusly:

WITH THE VOICES OF: James McAvoy (Arthur), Hugh Laurie (Steve), Bill Nighy (Grandsanta), Jim Broadbent (Santa), Imelda Staunton (Mrs. Santa), Ashley Jensen (Bryony), Marc Wootton (Peter), Laura Linney (North Pole Computer), Eva Longoria (Chief De Silva), Ramona Marquez (Gwen) and Michael Palin (Ernie Clicker).

Did you notice something? The Times’ style dictates that character names are in parentheses after the actors’ names. The Muppet characters are listed as though they’re actors, as if there is no one sweating underneath them. This is the New York Times, mind you, a periodical not typically read by preschoolers -- no, not even Manhattan kids -- who would be disillusioned to see an actor’s name in front of a Muppet’s. (Not to mention that they have no problem with saying that Jim Broadbent is Santa.)

And even preschoolers don’t care. We see so many little ones who visit Sesame Street, and their eyes don’t even notice the very large puppeteer holding their favorite character. They only see Elmo or Telly or Grover.

So if you go see the movie this weekend, give a small thought to my friends Dave, Steve, Eric, Matt, David, Peter, and Bill, as well as all the additional puppet folk filling the frame.

Of course, they do their job so well that you’ll probably forget. I understand.

And that’s 12,514 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 25: yesterday

2011-11-25T00:30:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

Yesterday’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was just about as good as it gets. The day was crisp and clear, with not a single percent chance of precipitation, and when the bright, dazzling sun finally rose over Central Park West, you could actually smell optimism and joy amid the autumn chill. That and coffee.

The only wrinkle in the day was the fact that the Museum of Natural History -- home of warmth and toilets next to the parade staging area for many a year -- was closed to us... or at least, none of us could find a way in, so we had to rely on the few Port-a-Potties that were set up. And even this was not as bad as it could have been; however, I am very glad that I utilized these facilities before I noticed how much they rocked back and forth when someone was inside (the comment if this potty’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’ was bandied about quite a bit).

I always enjoy seeing my fellow Sesame Street puppeteers on this day, and I especially love seeing the legendary cast members such as Bob, Roscoe, Loretta, Emilio, Sonia, Alison, Alan, and Nitya... you might know them better as Bob, Gordon, Susan, Luis, Maria, Gina, Alan, and Leela (Gabi and Chris were out of town). It really does seem like the family getting together for Thanksgiving every year, only there’s no food and the kiddie table is actually the inside of the float where all of the puppeteers are, wreaking havoc and merry mayhem, shouting out the window to the spectators via our Muppets, even though no one could possibly hear any of us over the marching bands and general parade din.

It’s truly an awesome sight to peek out the float’s windows as the parade ambles along to see the sea of humanity flooding the streets and sidewalks of New York City. There seem to be more and more people who come out for the parade each year, and while it stands to reason that decent weather attracts larger crowds, this Thanksgiving was a bit colder than last year... and yet this was the first time that I ever saw the crowd stretch from 6th Avenue all the way to 5th Avenue on 38th (or was it 39th?) Street... and that is quite a long block.

And this year, for the first time ever, we could actually see our true performances for Sesame’s musical number as it aired in real time. Muppet Performers rely on TV monitors so we know where our puppets are looking, seeing as the puppets themselves have no ocular nerves. In the past, before high-definition, there would be regular TVs set up in the float dialed to NBC, and it would always take a second or so for the video signal to bounce from the camera to the broadcast tower back to the float, creating a slight, somewhat annoying, lag. In the last few years, though, there has been what’s seemed to be a full seven-second delay, making our monitors totally useless. But this year, we got a direct hookup to the broadcast feed, meaning every flap of our puppet’s mouths could be seen instantly, just as it was happening, just like when we’re in the studio... and it was fantastic. Plus, it’s always fun to puppeteer Grover, even with half a coat on (because he’s so skinny).

It was even wonderful once we were done with the parade. After the floats and balloons serenely pass Macy’s, they make a right turn up 8th Avenue, and then it’s a scene of total chaos. Each balloon is instantly deflated, their handlers immediately dismissed, and the floats parked along side streets and emptied as quickly as possible. Add to this police barricades and cops re-routing foot traffic everywhere you look, and sometimes it becomes an endless quest just to find an open subway entrance so you can get home. But by some universal grace, our float parked mere steps away from an entrance that was not only open, but was also for the particular subway line that I needed to get back to my neighborhood... and then, a train came just one minute later. I was home long before the parade even ended, and I got to see Santa Claus arrive in Herald Square from the comfort of my bedroom, curled up with a warm beverage and my husband.

Of course, it wasn’t until I was on the subway that I realized that the right side of my coat was still dangling off me...

Ah, what a fun morning.

But now the holiday crunch has officially begun. Start your engines, kids, and hang on for the duration.

And that’s 11,547 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 24: thankful

2011-11-24T00:30:00.002-05:00

So here we are.

Oh come on. You know this one’s going to be a list of things I am thankful for. I mean, that’s what people do on Thanksgiving, right? It’s the one thing we can all expect to have served at dinner. Even the vegans. Sharing things we are thankful for is the cranberry sauce of Thanksgiving: expected, demanded, but few people really want it.

But I am not serving cranberry sauce this year. So...

Here are some things that I am not thankful for:

I am not thankful for studies. Studies that seem to constantly show that everything I do or have done is horribly wrong and will kill me. Studies that show that everything I have bought, thought, consumed, inhaled, watched, or witnessed is the opposite of what I should have bought, thought, consumed, inhaled, watched, or witnessed. Studies that fold their arms and sit on their high horses and point directly at me, telling me that I am essentially doomed. And especially studies that say one thing one day and then come out again six months later saying the exact opposite thing.

I am not thankful for the concept of limited-time-only. It makes me think I want a Shamrock Shake when in actuality I do not want one and will never want one.

I am not thankful for knick-knacks.

I am not thankful that this casting notice existed:

Role: Hot Girl Customer (Guest-Star) who comes in for a job interview and shows her breasts to get the job.

Rate/Compensation: Chance to be on a network reality show, free exposure and chance of a recurring role, and free haircut or massage, depending on storyline.

I am not thankful for DVD easter eggs that can only be accessed after you’ve watched everything on the disc.

I am not thankful for the 6-inch stiletto trend.

And finally, I am not thankful for the exploitation of holidays like Thanksgiving in order to feed my futile desire for an idyllic existence just so I’ll be tempted to buy that potato ricer or table runner.

But I am thankful for a lot more than I am not, including -- to borrow a phrase from PBS -- viewers like you.

Happy Thanksgiving, my devoted dozens.

(Which reminds me... I am also thankful for warm rolls.)

SIDE NOTE REGARDING YESTERDAY’S POST: I found out last night that I am no longer puppeteering Cookie in today’s parade, but Grover instead. I do love Grover, and even though this means I’ll have to take off half of my coat due to his skinniness, thankfully it’s not freezing, so it’s okay. Lesson learned: never blog about something you’re happy about potentially happening until after it’s happened. It’s all good, though, because it’s not raining. Not raining on parade day is way more important than what puppet you have on. Trust me on this.

And that’s 10,759 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 23: dum de dum dum dum

2011-11-23T00:30:00.006-05:00

So here we are.

Tomorrow morning, I will be on the Sesame Street float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the 13th time. I am currently slated to be performing (via lip-synch, of course) Cookie Monster for the third year in a row, unless something changes between now and then.

And if things do not change (though again, they might), this makes me the luckiest girl. When it comes to the parade, Cookie is the one you want to puppeteer.

Puppeteering on the float is many, many things. It is fun, exciting, exhausting, exhilarating, cold, awkward, and often a little painful, all at the same time. We’re not in the ideal body positions, and there are a lot of people crammed into a very small space, not to mention the fact that we are bundled up in our winter woolens. So which puppet you are assigned can make the difference between discomfort and joy.

I love all of the characters. I love all of the puppets. But Zoe, with her skinny neck and body, does not fit over a jacket sleeve. Neither does Grover. In these cases, you wind up wearing half your coat. Bert and Ernie fit over sleeves, but have other problems... Ernie is very wide and has trouble sharing a float window (as does the Count), and Bert’s torso is too long for my forearm if my elbow is bent, which it sometimes has to be since the windows are low.

Ah, but Cookie. Cookie fits over my jacket. Cookie is flexible, and not too heavy. Cookie can hold his head in his hand, drumming the side of his head with his long, furry fingers, as if bored (dum de dum dum dum), giving me a little rest... since my right hand is in his head and my left hand is in his hand.

Plus, Cookie is just plain fun. I am forever blown away by his design, and just how much character shines from this simple lump of fur with the big mouth and two googly eyes. The crowd loves him. He can wave, he can play peek-a-boo, he can blow kisses and salute... or continue to sit there bored (dum de dum dum dum). Little kids and their parents alike are thrilled by him. I am too.

So if you watch the parade tomorrow, and Cookie looks less than enthused (dum de dum dum dum), know that it’s not because he’s not having any fun. It just means my arm needs a little rest.

That is, unless they put me on Ernie at the last minute. Ernie’s never bored... which means I could be very sore on Friday.

And that’s 10,282 words. Half of the HoLoBloMo challenge has been met. Whoo-hoo!

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 22: pie

2011-11-22T00:30:00.002-05:00

So here we are.

And I am thinking about pie. It’s that time. Time for pie.

Time to pick up the pie, or make the crust and buy the apples, but who am I kidding... it’s time to pick up the pie.

My favorite pie at Thanksgiving is my favorite pie in New York City: the sour cream apple walnut pie from the Little Pie Company. It is a staggeringly excellent pie. It is also thirty dollars.

There was a time in my life when I would have been offended and appalled at the notion of spending thirty dollars for anything edible, let alone a pie. I remember an evening long ago, my very first year living in the city. A group of Muppet folk were having a spontaneous dinner at the old Iridium restaurant at Lincoln Center. It was the first fancy-ish place I’d been in New York. And when I looked at the menu and saw that the entrees were between twenty-five and thirty dollars, I whispered angrily to my husband, who was then only my boyfriend:

This is ridiculous! This is offensive! I refuse to pay this kind of money! It’s just dinner!

See, the student loans had recently come due, and I was temping whilst trying to find a foothold as a Muppet Performer, and the sinful co-habitation with my someday-husband was the only way I could afford to live in Manhattan. Thirty dollars was almost an entire day of take-home pay for temps like me. Hell, just the year before, in college, I rarely had more than thirty dollars on me at any given time.

My husband-then-boyfriend chuckled at that, and assured me he’d cover my bill, but I was still fuming. I was with a table full of people who were working steadily in television and could easily afford a thirty dollar entree, to say nothing of the wine, and I, scrabbling as a wanna-be, could not. I’m not sure if I was more jealous of my table-mates or more righteously indignant at the sheer fact that any establishment could charge so much for victuals.

And then, suddenly but not overnight, I could afford a thirty dollar pie.

Of course, for caloric and budgetary reasons, it is a rare indulgence reserved for the holidays. But it is an amazing pie. The apples are crisp, and sliced razor thin, layered scores deep among the rich sour cream filling, nestled in a cinnamon-infused crust, and covered with a thick, powerful cement of a streusel packed with walnuts. It is a heavy beast, and ounce-per-ounce, worth every penny.

Last Thanksgiving, in a burst of frugality and ambition, I decided to make my own pie. Nothing fancy, just an ordinary apple pie. Trader Joe’s frozen crust, fresh Macoun apples, lots of cinnamon.

It looked angry.

And while it was an okay pie, it’s mediocrity reminded me of why it took me so long to learn to love pie. I was a cake girl until my twenties, when finally, the right pie came along and opened the door to the joys of a proper crust. Where had these pies been all my life? How many nights of pie love had I missed out on? Life was short. Too short for my attempts at pie-making, too short to miss out on the warm embrace of better pies.

So I finally figured it out. Thirty dollars, in any economy, is a small price to pay for love.

And that’s 9839 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 21: tourist tip

2011-11-21T00:11:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

Maybe you know this, or maybe you do not, but I make Manhattan my home. I did not grow up here, however; that designation belongs to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA... a mere 370-ish physical miles from here but a more than a million mental ones.

Everything I’d heard about New York City -- from TV, films, and friends -- suggested that the rapid pace of the city would overwhelm me and swallow me whole. But when I came here, I found myself easily transitioning to a slightly faster walking speed, even with my unfortunately short legs. It was such a not-a-big-deal that it was somewhat disappointing.

But all I ever seem to hear from out-of-towners is how fast the city is. How they can’t believe how those rude New Yorkers just blow by them on the sidewalks.

It finally occurred to me why this is, and since it’s the start of the big holiday tourist season, I offer a simple analogy to all you tourists out there as a public service:

New Yorkers are, for the most part, their own cars. They are mobilized by their feet, and not in the Fred Flintstone way. When they walk, wherever it may be, they are walking with purpose to their jobs or appointments or other such errands, and they are doing it as quickly and efficiently as they can.

We are, in fact, no different from you... only your efficient speed is behind the wheel. Think about how you drive when you are at home. If you’re running late for an appointment, or heading out to pick up your kids, or even just dealing with the daily commute, and you’re in front of a slow car (especially with out-of-state plates), you’re going to tailgate the hell out of them, curse them, pass them as soon as possible, or all of the above. And if there are a lot of them, you’re going to weave, speed, and do whatever it takes to get out of that clump of *your-profane-adjective-of-choice-here* Sunday drivers.

Well, when you come to NYC and decide to stroll leisurely through the streets, you are our Sunday drivers. Mind you, we bear you no ill will, and in fact welcome your tourism dollars and love of our city. But we will blow your doors off.

So take it in stride, literally. Or stay in the slow lane. And enjoy the fact that at least we don’t flip you off in the rear view window.

And that’s 9254 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 20: 100

2011-11-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

Thanks to HoLoBloMo, I’ve reached a milestone much sooner than I anticipated. For this is my 100th web...blah...log post! Wow! How about that?

*crickets*

Yeah. We sure do like our milestones, don’t we? But then when we reach them, nothing special happens. No balloons fall from the sky. No cake magically appears. You have to schlep for your own balloons and cake just the way you would anything else, on any other day.

You’re exactly the same as you were when you did your 99th post, unless maybe you got a haircut in between, or got hit by a bus. Your 100th post may not even be as good as the other 99, and maybe your 101st post will be the best post ever, or maybe it won’t, but no one will notice or care, because its numerical order does not end in a 0, two 0s, a 5 and a 0, or three 0s.

Don’t you go telling me about 4 zeros. I have a finite lifespan.

I’m told it’s because we have ten fingers and ten toes, and our counting system is created on “base ten.” This is where my head starts to hurt. I don’t need to know why the math is, I only need to know how to make the math, right? I mean, do I need to think about the fact that there is no special digit for the number ten? It’s a 1 and a 0, yes, but come on. Let’s just call it ten. Let’s not call it “1 ten and 0 ones.” Which is what it is, yes, I know, but...

And let’s not even get into the fantasy worlds where we have 8 fingers and toes, or 12, and then try to wrap our heads around “base 8” or “base 12.” Can’t I just talk about candy like I normally do?

But the one thing that does interest me is thinking about how someone came up with the numbers to begin with. Not so much the Roman Numerals. I can take or leave those. I’m talking the Arabic numbers. 1 is easy. It looks like a single finger, and is sort of a ripoff of a Roman Numeral I. But who decided that the 3 should kind of look like half an 8, when 3 isn’t actually half of 8? And who decided that the 9 should be an upside-down 6? And if the 9 is an upside-down 6, then why is the 5 a variation of an upside-down 2 rather than an actual upside-down 2?

Oh, man. I sound like a Hollywood studio’s notes on numbers. (And could there be two 8s? They’re so cute and jolly. We could spin them off! That would be an amazing franchise!)

Back to milestones.

Aside from the whole base ten thing, maybe we’re fascinated by all things ending in 0 because one of our major accomplishments as a wee peanut is learning to count to ten. And when we did that, everyone went yay! I guess we just keep thinking that every milestone that’s a multiple of ten will automatically warrant a yay!

That may be sad, but it doesn’t mean I won’t shlep for cake anyway.

And that’s 8829 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 19: fascinating

2011-11-19T00:19:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

There’s a fascinating place in New York City.

I know. That’s an unfair sentence, right? Because there are a lot of fascinating places here. There are also secret places, underrated places, odd places, and places that deserve every adjective in the book.

Maybe I’m the only one who finds it fascinating. But since I have home-blog advantage, I get to choose the descriptor.

This fascinating place is a recording studio. That’s not what makes it fascinating. It’s not the oldest; at least, I don’t think it is. It’s certainly had its share of incredible, legendary musicians and vocalists pass through its doors, but that can be said of pretty much all of the remaining major studios in town. The talented engineers are fantastically good guys, but again, par for the course.

I’ve been to studios with better food, better beverage selection, plusher seats, fresher candy, and more elegant bathrooms, but this place has an amenity that I’m not sure everyone would recognize as being special, unless you worked there:

They have the best pencils. Ever.

There was a time when I absolutely hated pencils. They’d smudge. The lead was too hard. It wouldn’t sharpen evenly, or would be splintery. The paint would flake off. The eraser was useless, either leaving hard pink trails in its wake, or simply smearing the mistake into a ghostly gray cloud. Mechanical pencils were even worse, snapping every time I put the slightest pressure on the nib, sending little tubes of lead everywhere. Plus, they were scratchy, making little impressions in the paper. Me and pencils were not okay, and most every attempt at sketching ended in failure, and not just because my art skills are mediocre.

Until I went to this studio.

So smooth was the lead, so perfect was the eraser, so light and slim was the entire package, that I was shocked. All it took was a single scribbled performance note in the margins of my sheet music to make me a believer.

And so I pocketed one. You know, by accident.

The next time I was at the studio, two. I don’t know how they got in my bag.

After a few years, the subject of the pencils was finally broached. Turns out, I was not the only devotee. The studio guys knew that their pencils walked out the door on a daily basis. They didn’t care. In fact, they loved it.

However, when asked (and repeatedly so) who their vendor was, who made the pencils and how one could order them, the guys are absolutely mum. They would sooner give you an entire box of their own pencils than tell you from whence they came.

I myself have been given fistfuls, gladly, every time I leave there. For this I am grateful, since I don’t find myself there very often. And as such, these pencils are dear. Whenever I do a staged reading, or am working with music or a script, these are the only pencils I use, and I always make sure to have one on hand when I’m working. I will gladly lend it to you, but I will watch you like a hawk to make sure I get it back. A pencil.

Are you convinced? That’s a fascinating place, right?

I thought so.

And that’s 8289 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 18: shipoopi

2011-11-18T00:30:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

I remember the first time I saw a video recording of a musical I did in high school. Someone’s mom had a high-end VHS camera (wow!) and shot the show for her kid. At the cast party, someone decided we should all watch it.

It was amazing and horrifying all at the same time. Even in the post-performance glow, even in my youthful naivete, I saw my flaws.

But I was comforted by the fact that relatively few people would see it. If it got copied, the quality would diminish with each generation. And in time, no one would remember or care.

Cut to 1998.

You know who I felt sorriest for during the Monica Lewinsky scandal? That poor kid whose unfortunate performance of “Shipoopi” from a high school production of The Music Man was broadcast on network television because Ms. Lewinsky happened to be playing Ethel Toffelmier in it, and there was a desperation to find video -- any video -- of her to air. That kid, who was no longer a kid, had to have been mortified that not only was he unwillingly dragged into a major political story, but also that heartless viewers were probably sitting on their sofas muttering, He ain’t no Buddy Hackett, that’s for sure.

It scared the crap out of me. All I could do was pray that no one I’d ever shared the high school stage with would become a politician or politician’s paramour. Granted, my performances were a little more confident than that of Shipoopi Boy, but they would never hold up under the microscope.

Cut to YouTube.

It’s hideous enough to be in high school, but imagine how nerve-wracking it must be for a kid today on opening night of that 3-performance run of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, knowing that an hour after the curtain comes down, the whole world will be able to watch and criticize his puberty-flavored rendition of “Suppertime.” How can any self-respecting member of the Thespian Society possibly manage to perform a role, have fun, flirt with fellow cast-members, organize pranks, and play the other ridiculous political backstabbing games associated with high school theatre when he is distracted by the threat of YouTube?

Suppose there’s a sophomore out there whose dreams include running for President. Even if he lacks singing or acting chops, the stage would be a great place for him to learn and grow. The kid is smart, and knows that if he auditions, he’ll probably get a role, because the school is doing Guys and Dolls with a startling lack of guys. But he also knows that all it takes to distract and maybe even derail a campaign is 30 million hits of a botched “Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat.” So he decides to work on lighting instead, where, surrounded by Dolls who are turned on by the offer of a trip to the catwalk, he gives in to his basest carnal urges and knocks up Miss Adelaide, effectively ruining everything.

It’s a tale as old as 2005, friends. So sad, so true.

And that’s 7742 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 17: warmth first

2011-11-17T00:30:00.002-05:00

So here we are.

I’ve already mentioned my heartbreaking decision not to run for President (see “press release” from this past spring), but I must add that I am also glad that my husband has refrained from throwing his hat in the ring as well. I am simply not cut out to be a First Lady, and not just because my arms are too chubby for the job.

It’s the whole Inauguration Day thing.

I always thought Michelle Obama was the bee’s knees, but never did I respect her more than on January 20, 2009, when she managed to look fantastically stylish sans any fleece or down products in sub-zero temperatures, and did not appear to ever shiver or take on a bluish hue. I do, however, recall audibly yelling at the television to both Obamas: Where are your hats, youngsters? You’d better not pull any of that William Henry Harrison crap!

But if I were to ever find myself in the position of spending a January afternoon in an outdoor ceremony covered by hundreds of news gathering organizations and viewed by millions, and not sitting in the back like some committee member that’s not going to get photographed except by accident, mind you, I’d do things a little differently.

First, hat. The Queen of Soul got it right. (I told you two weeks ago, singers are serious about staying healthy!) Still, I would choose something a little more practical, like a nice warm cloche that would also cover the ears, but not the lobes (because earrings are a must when bearing witness to history).

Second, I would wear a real coat. I say it again: a real coat. Sure, I’d eschew the puffy Michelin Man look, but there’s cashmere and alpaca and all sorts of fabulously warm blends out there that can be tailored beautifully... and if need be, it could always be lined with a layer of down or faux fur. Lining. That is the key. Ms. O did apparently have a lining in that gorgeous little “coat,” but it’s all moot when you wear the coat open. (Unless underneath, one is covered head to toe in ThermaCare heat wraps. Now there’s an idea!)

Third, scarf. Sure, this risks covering up your necklace, but that’s why they invented the Bedazzler.

Fourth, tights. Sweater tights. Yes, they add bulk, but if the rest of you is already bulked up, then your proportions will still be the same. Or you could wear multiple pairs of hosiery. Or gloriously detailed knee-high leather boots. It’s not rocket science.

But the world has become a fickle place, and I suppose it’s become a priority for those in the public eye to sacrifice personal safety and comfort in favor of being sweet, delicious eye candy.

I’ll just have to settle for being full of candy.

And that’s 7220 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 16: oh, man

2011-11-16T00:30:00.002-05:00

So here we are.

I am not pleased with The Man today. The Man cleared out Zuccotti Park. The Man tore down the tents. The Man is throwing his weight around in Oakland, too. And to that, I say, okay, The Man. You do that. You go and be The Man. You just continue to be someone to rail against and try to stick it to.

But when The Man messes with Community, and bumps it off the air mid-season, I say, oh, no. Oh, no, The Man. Don’t you raise my hackles, The Man. You do not want to raise the hackles of someone who is weeks from becoming middle-aged and as such is already well-versed at fist-waving.

I have been very clear about my love for Community, most recently in “open letter,” but I think it’s time to be very frank with The Man:

Dear The Man---

You fool. It’s bad enough that you’re The Man. But to be such a foolish The Man, with sight so short and knees so jerky, is pathetic, indeed.

What do you think you have accomplished here by saying, We’re taking it off the air but it’ll be back sometime when we don’t know when...? What good does that bring to the world? What joy does that spread to mankind? What makes you think this will finally be the one action, that magic bullet, that brings people back to NBC?

I am the first to admit that perhaps Community is not everyone’s cup of tea, and it is clearly not yours, The Man. However, you cannot argue that this little show has delivered a quality of television that is truly unique. This is rare, and you know this, The Man. You know that this balance between funny and dark, clever and camp, or outrageous and sober is not found in your average sitcom. But then, you also know that this is not your average sitcom. Most sitcoms do not do episodes about chicken fingers, paintball, bottle shows, alternate timelines and stop-motion animation (in stop-motion animation). Most sitcoms are still doing episodes about hijinks ensuing when *fill-in-the-blank* happens.

Some shows are brilliant but ignored. Those are the shows to promote. Those are the shows to parade and be proud of. Those are not the shows to actually contribute to putting on the bubble with a bad timeslot and then get all panicky about it being on the bubble. When a baby bird has a broken wing, you help it. You don’t break its other wing.

Be a man, The Man. Cancel it or don’t cancel it. But this passive-aggressive crap is crap.

Sincerely---

---Stephanie

And that’s 6751 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 15: halfway

2011-11-15T00:07:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

I’m at the halfway point of this challenge, and so far I am on track to hit, and probably exceed, 10,000 words. Of course, part of me looks at the past 14 entries and thinks, You fool! That’s more than two months worth of regular almost-weekly posts you’ve squandered! You could have had a backlog, allowing you to rest easy in a hammock if you had one!

The other part of me is surprised I’ve had that much to say.

I know that the NaNoWriMo that this was inspired by is about sheer volume and not being too careful in one’s editing, and I can understand that since it is a daunting task to write a novel. However, I’ve chosen a different rule for myself. I’ve been editing. I’ve tried to keep these HoLoBloMo posts as similar in quality to my regular posts as I can, only shorter, since the average length of my regular posts usually hovers around 700 words, with the longest ones exceeding 1000 words (I do go on, don’t I?).

I’m not a fan of half-assery. It would be very easy (and indeed, it has been tempting) to go the “purple monkey dishwasher” route, throwing randomness and word-filler to the wall and calling it creativity. But I’m in it to win it -- the royal “it,” if you will -- especially since the Internet is forever.

And as such I must confess that there are days when I write multiple posts if the spirit moves me, because I think it’s better to leap on the juicy-brain moments when they present themselves rather than try to tap a dry well. There is nothing more painful than writing insincere and purposeless crap... except reading it. You can call it cheating, but I call it a public service.

Even still, the month is far from over and I am not out of the woods yet. In the past, I have found myself paralyzed by fear of imperfection, and this often hinders my taking various leaps of faith. It is not that I don’t take chances; I am, after all, still an actor... but sometimes I have to remind myself that risking -- and even tempting -- failure is the only thing that will allow me to grow as a person and artist.

That is, if you consider miscellaneous ramblings about culture and candy to be art.

Maybe I should ramble about Campbell’s soup cans instead. Hey, it worked for Warhol.

And that’s 6304 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 14: quiet

2011-11-14T00:30:00.006-05:00

So here we are.

It was a quiet weekend. Literally. I spent most of it on complete vocal rest.

See, this cold I’ve been dealing with for the last two weeks has been a little wicked. It’s the sort of chest cold I haven’t had in many years. The kind of cold I had the first time I lost my voice onstage. It is evil and green.

And I don’t look sick, either. No red nose, no post-nasal drip... just the occasional cough. Then another. Then a fit that can last up to 20 minutes. I am releasing things from my lungs that should not exist in nature.

Coughing is the worst thing you can do to a voice, and as such, my vocal cords are in distress. It’s one of the few times I’ve been grateful for this little span of unemployment... it means I haven’t had to concern myself much with my singing voice and I could just let the cold run its course, something I’m not often able to do.

But I have an audition for a musical slated for today. So on Friday night, I found myself shot back in time to those desperate days of the Broad Way, filled with panic and gargling, flowing with honey and lemon.

It was the only thing I hated about my halcyon days. Putting one’s self on vocal rest whilst in a show or having a singing engagement looming is a nerve-wracking endeavor. It always goes the same way, every time:

You sit and fidget. You drink tea. You gargle salt water. You drink more tea. You are tired of peeing. You write notes to your loved one: hi... do you want a sandwich... I am just going to skip a step and pour the tea down the toilet. You have the patience of an impudent toddler. Part of you wants to trill, just a teeny bit, just to test your voice, and part of you knows that will only make it worse. You Google everything related to laryngitis and home remedies, hoping to hear of some newfound ancient miracle twigs-and-berries cure that will let you sing again, only to read the same thing, over and over: vocal rest and time... vocal rest and time... a few days, a few weeks...

And you freak out. Weeks? I don’t have weeks! I don’t even have days! What am I going to do?

It sucks. Not the losing-one’s-voice part, though that does suck, but rather, the exhausting mental stress of agonizing about it. Then again, there are lots of things that suck much, much more, and you have to remember that, too.

This time around was a little different. My husband was out of town, making vocal rest easier yet lonelier. And I got some ginger root tea, a new experience for me, having read about it online. After two cups, I read that the strong nature of ginger root tea might be irritating to the vocal cords, so I stopped that. Internet, why can’t you get your stories straight?

The few times I ventured out of the apartment, to run some errands and do laundry in the basement, were interesting. In the past, I have been apt to let a word or two slip out, just to be polite. This weekend, I smiled, but remained silent, mouthing things like hi and thank you. The people I encountered looked at me funny. I think the guy who sold me my ginger root tea, lozenges, and homeopathic throat formula (a.k.a. snake oil) put two and two together, but I suspect that the checkout girl at the supermarket almost tried to ask if I habla-ed español and then thought the better of it.

Anyway, late last night, after 48 hours of silence, I let out a little trill. Then I warmed up and tried to sing.

Well... I’m not at 100% yet, but I can’t imagine how much worse it could have been if I hadn’t spent the weekend drowning in tea and silence.

And that’s 5893 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 13: good vibes

2011-11-13T11:37:00.005-05:00

Note: technical problems made this post go up later in the day than I hoped it would.

So here we are.

A week ago, tens of thousands of runners ran the New York City Marathon... as I sat on my arse and wrote.

Today, my sister will run the Norfolk Freedom Half Marathon/5K. Maybe I’ll do some laundry.

It’s impressive to me when anyone runs. It’s more impressive to me when someone runs despite major health issues that often prevent them from running. It’s still even more impressive when someone runs despite those major health issues in order to raise money for worthy causes.

Well, that’s my sister.

My doing laundry doesn’t help anyone but me. Sure, I suppose that humanity is also served... at least, the humanity within a 5-foot radius of me... but it’s hardly the same.

She’s been running since 2004, and has run many races of varying lengths, some for charity, some not. She’s had more setbacks than anyone deserves, but still she runs. And despite spending far too many hours with (and dollars on) physical therapists in recent months, she’s hell-bound to run today, because this particular race is special.

Her run today is for Chris Campbell, one of the 30 Navy SEALs killed in the August helicopter crash in Afghanistan. My sister went to high school with Chris, and while she didn’t know him well, she knew many of his buddies well.

But she’s not just running for his memory. One of Chris’ wishes was that if he were killed in the line of duty, he would want donations to be made in his name to Wounded Warrior Project. So my sister decided that she’d also raise $3,000. Now. When everyone is out of work and struggling to get by. Yeah. (She’s a little crazy, in a good way.)

When she sets out to do something, she does it all the way. She didn’t just put the word out on Facebook and her blog... she sent letters to 150 people all over the country (including her landlord), and when nearly 70 of them responded with donations tiny to generous, she sent hand-written thank you’s to every single one of them... to tide them over until she sends them another thank you later this week, one that recaps today’s events and will no doubt include a pre-race photo of herself, covered in ribbons that feature the names of every single donor. That is a lot of ribbon, a lot of stamps, and a lot of carpal tunnel stress on top of a lot of training.

She’s met her ambitious fundraising goal, but she’s still frustrated by the fact fact that she’s not sure she’ll be physically able to run the half-marathon. She’s afraid she’ll have to settle for running the 5K.

So I’m sending her good vibes today as I fluff and fold, vibes of strength that I hope will either get her through the half, and/or vibes of sanity that I hope will convince her that running the shorter race is not a defeat.

Feel free to vibe along, if you wish.

And that’s 5219 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

POSTSCRIPT: She finished the half. I am so proud of her.

holoblomo day 12: bearing witness

2011-11-12T09:19:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

I’ve always been fascinated by people who have lived in eras that have borne witness to incredible change. Whenever I would read the obituary of someone who lived from 1898 to 1998, I’d marvel at what these people must have seen and experienced. Imagine being a child at a time when women couldn’t vote, movies were new and silent, cars were still novel, and there was no radio, television, or airplanes... and then seeing the culture explode with promise, progress, and invention throughout your lifetime.

But lately I’ve come to realize that maybe I’m also one of those lucky ones, seeing great change unfold before me. When I was a child, computers run by punch cards filled entire rooms, telephones were still rented from Ma Bell, and if you wanted to watch any of the 13 channels that the dial offered, you had to physically be in front of the TV at the time your favorite show actually aired. Music was analog and available only via radio, record albums, and concerts. People bought and used postage stamps. Credit cards were for rich people. Purses were tiny because they mostly just held cash, keys, lipstick and cigarettes. And even well into my adolescence, there was a staggering amount of racism, misogyny, and homophobia reflected as norms in the popular culture.

There has been more change than I ever realized there could be in the last 40 years, some of it not necessarily for the better (I miss being unreachable and Kodachrome), and some of it still has a long way to go. Granted, it’s not the kind of jet-packs-and-moving-sidewalks kind of change I anticipated. And goodness knows that social utopia is pretty much a forever away.

But yesterday, I went to the beautiful wedding of my friends Tom and David. And no one went whaaaat?

It’s not a hovercraft. But it’s still fantastic.

And that’s 4714 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 11: alt verse

2011-11-11T07:32:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

It’s sad to think that we’ll never know what our parallel universes might have had in store for us.

Maybe, in a parallel universe, the song would have gone like this:

So hi, hi Mrs. British pastry

Steered my Ford to the fjord but the fjord was flooded

And bad young guys were swilling scotch and rum

Crooning, “this’ll be the night that I live...”

“This’ll be the night that I live.”

See, in that particular parallel universe, songs don’t rhyme. They’re still deep, though.

Also, in a parallel universe, we might not be so bored or easily distracted that we are completely mesmerized and enchanted by days where the date is written 11/11/11. (It’s not like it’s raining candy from the sky today or anything. More likely, we’ll all just look back on this day and say, “wasn’t that fun when we wrote the date 11/11/11? Gosh, that was even more fun than 10/10/10 and 01/01/01. Yeah. Those were the days.”)

Of course, sometimes I look around and wonder if this current reality isn’t the parallel universe... some alternate 2011 where someone somehow got their hands on a sports almanac from the future.

I hope Doc and Marty can fix it.

And that’s 4398 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 10: nostalgia

2011-11-10T00:54:00.001-05:00

So here we are.

This past spring, I wrote a passage about nostalgia in “time warp:”

If nostalgia had existed in the 1300s, there probably would have been some monk who preferred to transcribe with a chisel and stone tablets because of its old-school quaintness.

I don’t know how far back nostalgia actually goes, but let’s give it a shot:

Someone sees someone streaming music from the cloud onto her smartphone and is nostalgic for the iPod.

Someone sees someone with an iPod and is nostalgic for the CD player.

Someone sees someone listening to CDs and is nostalgic for audio cassettes.

Someone sees someone with a Walkman and is nostalgic for 8-track tapes.

Someone sees someone with an 8-track player and is nostalgic for LPs.

Someone sees someone buying LP records and is nostalgic for 45s.

Someone sees someone listening to 45s and is nostalgic for 78s.

Someone sees someone listening to a 78 record on a gramophone and is nostalgic for cylinders.

Someone sees someone enjoying music on a cylinder and is nostalgic for sheet music played on the piano in the parlor room.

Someone hears sheet music being played on the piano in the parlor room and is nostalgic for music boxes.

Someone hears a music box and is nostalgic for singing around the fire.

Someone hears people singing around the fire and is nostalgic for chamber music.

Someone hears chamber music and is nostalgic for tribal drums.

Someone hears tribal drums and is nostalgic for the sound of two rocks hitting each other.

Someone hears the sound of two rocks hitting each other and is nostalgic for a time when it was totally quiet, before that other caveman moved in and created that infernal sound.

So I guess it goes back further than I thought.

And that’s 4188 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 9: smell-o-vision

2011-11-09T00:10:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

I used to love scented candles. When I was in my 20s, working for a few months on a kids’ show in Los Angeles, I discovered the gloriously fragrant wax creations peddled by the Bath and Body Works in the Glendale Galleria. They made the stale air in my corporate housing so much more palatable, and it was a peaceful way to slip into the evenings after a long day of puppetry... being hypnotized by the soft, flickering flame gently releasing raspberry or vanilla-lavender swirls of delight. Aromatherapy was still a new word in my vocabulary, but I believed. And seeing as I actually had some disposable income for the first time in the history of my existence, I was thrilled to be able to finally afford a little luxury.

As time passed I came to use them less and less, after hearing about carbon wicks and such, but since they are quintessential gifts to both give and receive, I had no reason to remove them completely from my life.

Cut to a few evenings ago.

I’d been coughing for days, and my throat was starting to get raw. Thanks to pharmaceuticals and saline spray, my nasal passages were clear, but starting to get dry as the humidity levels in the city plummeted.

I was unloading the dishwasher when an odd smell wafted down my throat. It wasn’t the dishes. It wasn’t the detergent. I had no idea where it was coming from, until I looked up and noticed the kitchen vent.

Someone in another apartment, next door or upstairs (or anywhere), was burning a scented candle. A scented candle that was sickeningly flowery, letting off one of those intense magazine-sample-esque fragrances that is subtle and palatable when the candle is cold and unlit, but wildly overpowering when melted into pools of perfume-y liquid goo.

And this olfactory offense was now haunting the air vents, clouding my kitchen, making its way into my tender throat and burning my nostrils. Every inhalation aggravated my coughing. Since not breathing was not an option, I opened a window. When it got too cold, I closed it, hoping I’d chased the unfortunate air away.

But the temporarily dissipated fragrance regrouped and reattacked.

And again, I opened the window until it got too cold.

Even though I prefer not to knock on my neighbors’ doors, I peered into the building hallway to see if the wafting was coming from someone on our floor. No trace of any disgusting passion-hyacinth-hibiscus-springtime-freesia-florals, which meant it could be coming from any unit in the line.

As the evening turned to night and the scent’s strength became ridiculous, I began to become concerned that perhaps the candle’s owner had fallen asleep. It was bad enough that the sheer act of taking in air became unpleasant, but if a fire were to break out because of someone’s addiction to aromatherapy, I was going to be very, very miffed.

I could imagine the firefighters running horrified out of the blaze, choking on the fragrance. I could picture milling tourists miles away, looking around curiously and wondering where that bright light was coming from, and who among them was wearing that horrible eau de toilette. I had nightmarish visions of sifting through charred belongings that smelled like the fragrance department of Hell.

Suffice it to say, we are alive and well and not a bit singed, thankfully.

But I’ve been burned by a scented candle for the last time, sister.

And that’s 3890 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 8: no way

2011-11-08T00:05:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

And I’m not gonna make it. I’m not talking about my HoLoBloMo challenge. I’m talking about not being able to make it through the next twelve months. It’s exactly 364 days (including Leap Day) until the 2012 presidential election, and I tell you now, I’m not gonna make it.

I’m spent. I can’t take all the noise anymore, and I’m only passively following it all at best. Every damn day for at least the last 14 months, it’s all we’ve been hearing about, and now there’s yet another year of ridiculousness ahead of us. Debate after pointless debate... and since when do we have so many debates so long before the first primaries? Since when does it make sense to start talking about 2012 mere moments after Election Day 2008? (It happened. You know it did. Can’t we ever just live in the now?)

It makes me long for the days I wasn’t even alive for, when candidates came out of those smoke-filled rooms at the conventions. That is saying something, when one is nostalgic for party bosses and puppet regimes. But at least there wasn’t this kind of cacophony in 1920.

I propose a law: that there should be no campaigning of any kind until exactly one year before Election Day, for any and every political race. Candidates must stay totally mum before then. They can do whatever they have to do to build their teams and war chests ahead of time, but they have to do it “silently” (meaning without any press releases or coverage). Then they all announce their intentions on the same day, in a big prime time special... you know, like when they announce who’s on Dancing With The Stars. And no one else can enter the field after that.

It would reduce fatigue for everyone, politicians and constituents alike, no matter what their party affiliation. It would condense the entire process and force the candidates to use their time, money, and words wisely. Concentrated campaigns could become more exciting, perhaps even drawing more people to the polls. A single year is plenty of time to shake out all of the skeletons and scandals... and it’s certainly more than enough time to get to know the players’ true personalities before you start to hate the sight of all of them. It would also allow any candidates who may already be holding office to actually do those elected jobs for a longer period of time before they go out on the trail and leave their assistants in charge.

I know, I know... whatever will the 24-hour news networks have to talk about during those odd years where there are no Congressional or Presidential elections?

Hmmm... the rest of the world, maybe? Or puppies.

And that’s 3304 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 7: 30 to 40

2011-11-07T00:02:00.000-05:00

So here we are.

The countdown has begun. In 30 days I will be 40.

I don’t know why I care. I’ve never cared about my age before. I’ve never lied about how old I am. I’ve never uttered, well, when I was born back in nineteen-seventy-mmmmmmwhmmm... And I have no intention of referring to myself as 39 plus one, ha ha. Sure, I’ve been covering my grays and buying a crapload of serums, creams and retinols for a while now, but come on. That’s not being afraid of a number. That’s just vanity.

But I’ve observed what that lethal mix of vanity and age can do. I’ve spent time on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I’ve seen things that cannot be unseen, cousin. Lips that go from ear to ear. Constantly surprised brows. Eyes that never quite close.

Not that I fear I will ever walk down the path of needles and knives. One needs copious amounts of money and pride for that. (And for some reason, one also needs to look good in taupe.)

However, shunning the plastic path leaves the other path... the path that I seem to already be heading down, even before the big four-oh... and that is the path paved with old lady catalogs.

Yes, they’ve been coming in the mail more and more frequently, waiting breathlessly for me to give up and give in to a world of housecoats, support hose, and horrible, horrible shoes. Looking at them reminds me of looking at the contents of my grandmother’s medicine chest, right down to the pink foam rollers and the Alberto V05. The pages from these sensible purveyors taunt me, whispering in the night: comfort and valuuuuuuuue... comfort and valuuuuuue...

And sure, maybe I could really use that vein cream. Maybe those dress shields could cut down on my dry cleaning bills. Maybe that muumuu will look ironically charming, quirky, and Zooey Deschanel-esque.

But the truth is, the only way for a muumuu to look ironically charming, quirky, and Zooey Deschanel-esque is to actually be worn by Zooey Deschanel. Once you’re out of your 20s and 30s, the granny look just looks like you’re an actual granny.

I won’t take this opportunity to say anything about the actual grannies who dress like Zooey Deschanel. (Suffice it to say that I’ve spent time on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, too...)

Oh well. Maybe once I’m 40 I’ll finally have a good excuse to place an order and see if that Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo lives up to its name, if that floral swim bonnet really is a stylish way to preserve my hairdo, or if that dickey actually fools people.

And that’s 2841 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 6: unoriginal

2011-11-06T00:03:00.000-04:00

So here we are.

I should know better than to think I could ever have an original idea.

Yesterday, I received a comment on “nanowrimo nononono” from Noisy Quiet that I will paraphrase here:

Once upon a time, a woman... decided she could never fulfill NaNoWriMo's requirements, but she figured at the very least she could blog once a day for the month of November, so she "invented" NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) as a joke for her and her friends. But her joke caught on... Last year she turned over the reigns to another organization... and NaBloPoMo is now hosted at BlogHer.

Oh well. 5 whole days of feeling original isn’t bad. And I’m grateful to know the truth, even if it is a tad disappointing.

Still, even with this nugget of information, I’m going through with my own HoLoBloMo, and while I was tempted to officially register at BlogHer as a participant of NaBloPoMo, I realized something:

I can’t be part of a NaMo because my Blo is HoLo, and also not a blo.

translation: I can’t be part of a National Month because my Blog is Horribly Local, and also not a blog.

(Of course, my blog not being a blog could change my challenge name yet again, to HoLoBlo-No-BloMo... but that would be a bit much.)

My HoLoBloMo does have the unique feature of aiming for 10,000 words and keeping track of the count, so I guess that’s something I can call my own. And I suppose that finding out that my idea was not as original as I thought it was did provide me with fodder for 1/30th of my challenge... so I really can’t complain too much about that.

But I don’t know... is it a sign that I found out about my unoriginality on the day Andy Rooney, the special guest star of “web...blah...log: the musical!”, died?

And that’s -- not counting Noisy Quiet’s comment -- 2391 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 5: ballad

2011-11-05T00:14:00.000-04:00

So here we are.

It’s incredible how seemingly random things in life intertwine. A couple of weeks ago, I was watching the Harry Belafonte HBO documentary, blown away by my underestimation of his activism over the decades, and suddenly I had a revelation: music plays heavily in the world of the oppressed, but not so much with the oppressors. There is no opposite of “We Shall Overcome.” No one does a revue of Gestapo folk songs; at least, not just for the reasons you’d think.

Less than a week after this epiphany, I was in rehearsal for a brief concert staging of TOMFOOLERY, a revue of music by the brilliant Tom Lehrer. I was familiar with many of his songs, but not all of them. And then came this lyric in “Folk Song Army,” a satirical look at the folk protest movement:

Remember the war against Franco

That’s the kind where each of us belongs

Though he may have won all the battles

We had all the good songs

So my realization was only beaten by about 50 years... by one of the greats, no less.

I guess when your agenda is about crushing people’s sprits or freedoms, you either can’t sing about it, don’t feel like singing about it, or are too tired from all the aforementioned crushing to sing about it.

True, now that I think about it, the Tim Robbins film Bob Roberts was all about a political candidate who used Dylan-esque folk songs (“This Land is My Land”) to push a decidedly darker agenda, but those songs weren’t particularly overt.

And really... what exactly would the dictators sing? Would it go like this?

Fight on for evil

Keep your head held high

Otherwise the rabble

Might stab you in the eye

Fight on for evil

You must do your worst

If they want to kill you

You’ve got to kill them first

Hmmm... that sounds more like a dictator’s alma mater or school fight song than it does an earnest ballad for suppression.

Is it that the oppressors don’t know how to sing? Or is it that the wealthy, powerful ones are too busy being powerful and counting their money to take the time to write songs? Because in a parallel universe, there might be counter-rallies at the Occupy movements, singing this:

We are the one percent

It is the fun percent

And all the ninety-nine

Can go eat cake and wine

Because it’s pretty clear

How all of us got here

We worked so hard, we did

(Plus we inherited)

The proletariat

They ain’t seen nothin’ yet

Because there’s always more

To borrow from the poor

The wider the divide

Means they can’t reach our side

But we can’t let them know

That we despise them so

So rally on, my friends

Because our cause depends

On the wealthy and the healthy and the stealthy leading the way...

And we’ll keep on putting the “us” in the U.S.A.!

Yipe. It’s a pretty bad song. I guess music doesn’t exactly lend itself to evil... with the exceptions of everything sung by Disney villains.

Disclaimer: the songs in this post were written purely for sarcastic and humorous purposes. I am not pushing any personal agenda, but I also sure as hell don’t want anyone singing them in earnest. Since they’re so ridiculous, I’m not sure I have to worry about that... but you never know. So don’t you go forwarding them to any dictators or C.E.O.s.

And that’s 2145 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 4: fog

2011-11-04T00:03:00.000-04:00

So here we are.

I am in the midst of a classic lightheaded, dizzying antihistamine haze. It doesn’t make everything funny or deep, but at least the fact that I can still breathe through my nose makes me not care about my brain-addled fog. I’d enjoy this little buzz a lot more if I didn’t feel primarily made of mucous. That and if it didn’t make me groggy during the day and unable to sleep at night.

Cold medicine is the only drug you have to sign your life away to get. The first time I was asked for my driver’s license at the pharmacy, I was so flattered! Golly, I giggled to myself, even with gooey eyes and a red nose I look under 21! Then I realized I wasn’t being carded... just being screened as a potential criminal. Thanks a lot, meth-heads.

And that’s 1567 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 3: dear society

2011-11-03T00:34:00.000-04:00

So here we are.

If there is proof that there is something wrong with society, it’s the following headline on web sites and local news stations:

Fun Things To Do With Leftover Halloween Candy.

It is now that I wish to address Society:

Society, let’s not pretend. You and I both know you’re going to just eat your damn Halloween candy. There is no shame in this.

Sure, you sit there on your pretend high horse and say that you’re tired of having all that candy around. You just keep telling yourself that.

No one put a gun to your head. No one demanded that you buy more candy than you needed. No one forced you to go out trick-or-treating and get all that candy. This is a free country, and candy is still an uncontrolled drug. Hell, I’m sure that even Ahmadinejad doesn’t care how much or how little candy the Iranians buy.

So don’t tell me that your worries and woes in these culturally divisive times are centered around your boredom with peanut butter cups or nougat-based confections. If you are a person who actually gets weary of Kit Kats, you are welcome to gather your apples and use the exits.

But we all know that no one buys that many Kit Kats without knowing what they’re in for.

And let’s be honest, Society. All those let’s-find-new-uses-for-the-candy stories aren’t actually about finding new uses for the candy one has laying around the domicile. It’s about providing an excuse to buy more candy.

Hmmm... okay, Society. You win.

And that’s 1425 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

holoblomo day 2: here whatever comes

2011-11-02T08:32:00.000-04:00

At the suggestion of my pal Julie, this challenge is now called HoLoBloMo.

So here we are.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am coming down with something, and this is the scary time when it’s just starting to manifest. Is the congestion going to go nasal or bronchial? Is it going to go away in the standard two-week time frame or is it going to linger until Christmas? How to attack? With what to attack? When to start attacking? When to give up on attacking and let whatever it will become just run its course?

Yes. I am a sickness nerd.

But you must understand that as a performer, sickness is my mortal enemy. Because every little thing I do is essentially an audition -- concerts, benefits, readings, short runs, demos, and yes, actual auditions -- it’s imperative for me to be in optimal health at all times, because phlegm is the cruelest wrench when thrown into the machine. Some lucky bastards manage to never get sick. I am not one of them.

It was worse when I was gainfully employed in the theatre, doing eight shows a week. Theatres are like kindergarten classes, not just for the reasons you’d think, but mostly because they are petri dishes. One microscopic germ clings, festers, and spreads like wildfire. And singing whilst ill is horrible. I’ve croaked and cracked and yes, even lost my voice entirely onstage. Sure, my husband loves it when the lung goo makes me sound like Suzanne Pleshette, and it sure is fun to humor him with a couple of “oh, Bob”s... but the cons outweigh the pros, big time.

During this time, I became absolutely obsessed with staying healthy. Most people think that Broadway actresses spend their days and their salaries shopping for fabulous clothes to wear to fabulous parties. I spent my days and my salary at health food stores and pharmacies, stockpiling Purell, Mucinex, Emergen-C, Wellness Formula, Sambucol, Zicam, Ricola, saline sprays, neti pots, and whatever magic miracle potion the Internet recommended. I actually ordered things like Lo Han Kuo and Emu Oil capsules. I gargled horrific concoctions. I learned the hard way that too many garlic supplements is not a good thing at all. I sucked zinc until the roof of my mouth turned to tin. I steamed, but all it gave me was great pores. None of it, and I mean none of it, made any difference. Except the damn Zicam, which they took off the damn market. Damn it people, you don’t shoot the damn gel up your damn nose! You swab! You swab lightly on the outside edges of the nostril! Dammit!

If you were a snake oil salesman, you could have made a mint from me. If you had a warehouse full of dirt, and you told me that dissolving a tablespoon of that dirt in two cups of boiling water would prevent illness, I guarantee you that you would have gotten that warehouse full of dirt off your hands quicker than you ever imagined. Such was my desperation.

And then, one day, I was no longer doing eight shows a week, on Broadway or Off, and suddenly, my colds came fewer and farther between. And even with this oncoming whatever-it-may-be, it has been many moons since my white blood cells have engaged in battle.

It reminds me of War Games: the only way to win is not to play.

So wait... getting sick will most likely prevent me from getting a performing job, but not getting a performing job may very well prevent me from getting sick. But I want to get a performing job, even if it makes me sick and unable to do the performing job.

Do you understand life yet? Because I sure as hell don’t.

And that’s 1161 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

nanowrimo nononono

2011-11-01T00:08:00.000-04:00

So here we are.

Today begins NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month -- where writers all over the globe are challenged to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the thirty days that hath November. I know a few perfectly sane people who are diving in to this pool of crazy. I doff my cap towards them.

But it ain’t for me. I’ve never been adept at long-form writing. (Some of you snarky types may be chortling, “You’ve never been adept at short-form writing, either.” Ha ha. You win the Game of Internet.)

Still, I am curious about the challenge of it all. I’m told that one of the main elements of NaNoWriMo is sheer output. Quantity over quality. Forcing one’s self to just write for the sake of writing.

One of the reasons I started this web...blah...log fourteen months ago was to challenge myself to write and do something entertaining and creative, because my real world only lets me be entertaining and creative when someone hires me to do so. It’s much easier to write anywhere than to act or perform anywhere, as acting in one’s living room produces a myriad of challenges that thousands of trees that have fallen in unpopulated forests can attest to.

So in order to up that ante, I am creating, just for me, Horribly Local Blog Writing Month, or HoLoBloWriMo. Throughout this month, I will be posting on this blog every day, which is saying something since my normal posting schedule is every 5-7 days. Since my first year of blogging produced approximately 50,000 lovingly edited words, I will make this month’s goal 10,000 words. Words that do not include my standard header and footer of So here we are and Yes indeed. Welcome to me. I’ll keep count at the end of each post.

Some of it will be fun. Some of it will be crap. And some of it may actually be -- *shudder* -- blog-like. But if you’re willing to go on this wacky adventure with me, then I’m game to give it a go.

And now, here come the disclaimers, just like in all those drug commercials:

I’m coming down with something and I can actually feel the phlegm machine cranking up. I have auditions to prep for and auditions that require no prep at all, but that all involve time-sucking waits and commutes. I have some commitments to perform at benefits and a few long days of upcoming work at Sesame Street. Then there’s Thanksgiving, and I’ll be working on the Sesame Street float at the Macy’s Parade before I trudge home to cook. And of course, the nature of the freelancer’s life means that I never have a firm idea of what I’m doing week to week. Not to mention that I do not have a maid. There will be days when I serve up deliciousness, and days where I just make you a sandwich for dinner. Eat it or don’t. Just remember that there are starving children in other countries who don’t get to read any blogs at all.

But I promise you here and now: under no circumstances will I write a post moaning about not having anything to write about. That would be waaay too blog-like.

And that’s 544 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.

bad bad girl

2011-10-26T00:02:00.000-04:00

So here we are.

I have always been a very good girl. Painfully square, if you will. My two shoes are many things, but mostly goody.

This occasionally irks me as I age into a period of uncertainty, as I realize that life has no guarantees. The ax of crap may fall on any of us, whether or not we kept curfew, studied hard, or didn’t inhale. And I wonder if I could have been having a lot more fun all this time. People get away with murder. Literally, figuratively... bad guys often win. Folks are camping out in Zuccotti Park right now because the bad guys won. So why not flirt with danger?

Well, Joe Law squelched that thought, sister.

Yeah. I had me a run-in. You heard me. I’m bad, baby. Bad. Sha’mon.

Wanna know what I did? I bet you do. Oh, it was bad. I took the light rail from Hoboken to Hoboken. (It was a very short trip.) And I bought a ticket at the machine. Adult. One-way. Full price. And the train was getting ready to depart. And I ran for it. And I made it.

And as I was on the train, I realized that in my haste and morning fog, I hadn’t validated the ticket by time-stamping it in the other machine (the machine next to the ticket machine). But I felt okay. I’d taken the light rail twice before, and no one had ever asked to see my validated ticket.

And for a brief moment, the cartoon devil on my shoulder danced for the first time. Because I’d Stuck It To The Man. I suddenly realized I could feasibly use my pristine, unstamped ticket for a return trip. Wow. I could save a whopping $2.10. Ooooh. I could buy a Coke Zero! So this is what rebellion tasted like... the promise of Coke Zero.

Up until this moment, my Sticking It To The Man had only entailed creating a round-trip-for-the-price-of-one-way by using my (totally legal) free transfer from the subway to the bus. (Granted, this sticking involved walking a lot of extra blocks to get to a transferrable bus within two hours of the start of my trip, but hey.) Or when my husband discovered many years ago that instead of buying a Big Mac for three dollars, he could get two Mac Juniors from the dollar menu, effectively Sticking It To The Man. (He later realized that with his 20 shares of McDonald’s stock, he was The Man and was ultimately sticking it to himself.)

But The Man does not want to be stuck to.

I exited the train, and there they were. The fuzz. The train fuzz. Asking to see my ticket. The ticket I had just bought with real money at a machine that showed which day/time I had bought it, but had not stuck into a different machine to stamp so it would show which day/time I stamped it. And when I pulled out this non-validated transit paper, out came his ticketing pad.

The Pad? Really? The Pad? I was gonna get slapped? O.J. never found the real killer but I was gonna get slapped?

In a parallel universe, I would have shouted this at the train fuzz. I would have railed against the system. I would have shook my vocal fist at all the iniquity and ridiculousness. I would have spat and spewed: I didn’t technically jump fare! I only feasibly could have jumped a future fare! Roman Polanski! Robert Blake! Mister Burns! I bought the ticket! I bought the ticket! Call American Express! Attica! Attica!

But in real life, my little heart sank. I was a good girl and now I’d broken bad. Worse, it was going to cost me seventy-four dollars.

I wasn’t having any fun at all. I was the worst rebel ever.

Now I lurk in corners, poorer, and ashamed to show my stupid face, scofflaw that I am. I resolve to learn my pricey lesson and return to the straight life I once knew. Crime simply does not pay... at least, it doesn’t for me.

But man, did you see Ken Burns’ Prohibition on PBS? Those scofflaws had all the fun...

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.