Chainmail

It looks as though WikiHow is going through my college days looking for suggestions. For instance, today we have How to Make Chainmail and while I didn't make nearly as much as many of the folks I knew, I still put in some time with the pliers opening and closing 15-gauge* wire rings.

It was a rather pleasant way to spend time, actually, if you stopped before your hands began to ache. If someone was trying finish a chainmail shirt for an event we would turn into specialists - one or more folks coiling the wire, cutting the links, and opening the links. The actual "knitting" (the term for assembling and closing the links) was left to the person who was ostensibly making the darn thing.

So we'd all sit around and gossip and flirt (there were very, very few Markland activities that did not take place while gossiping and flirting - it's very like theater in some respects) and work on whichever project for a while.

Vastly more interesting than doing anything I was supposed to be doing.

*Want a quick comparison for 15-gauge wire? The plasmaphersis center where I'd swap blood products for lunch money used 15-gauge needles. A real chainmail shirt is heavy.

Because I needed more stuff

David and I spent the weekend at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherstown, WV. That is to say, we saw four plays in three days at Shepherdstown and stayed two nights at Casa Dad & Audrey, which meant that I got grits and bacon for breakfast, a comfy bed to sleep in, and the good pleasure of hanging out with my folks. CATF is my favorite weekend of the year.

There is always a certain amount of theater-related stuff for sale at CATF (David and I each have a ball cap and I have a spiffy red t-shirt) but this year they really got with the program. Someone finally figured out that audience members will crack their wallets open faster for intermission treats than for pretty near anything in else theater. And so this year fridges were rounded up and placed in the lobbies of the two theaters and interns sold cold drinks and ice cream treats in addition to the tchotchkes. Oh frabjous day!! Callooh! Callay! If they find a coffee maker for next year I don't think that I'll be able to stand the excitement.

There was also an audience survey which offered a 10% discount on the aforementioned tchotchkes to anyone turning in a completed survey. David and I each completed a survey and then I went shopping. They let me use David's survey to get 10% off of an overpriced - but exceedingly fetching - t-shirt that says (wait for it) "thinktheater", which I already do a lot, so I thought I might as well have it on a t-shirt. And (using my survey) on a travel mug and a director's pen, which has a little light built into it for taking notes in the dark. I also liked that the town gets a look-in, so the complete text on my very important geeky new stuff says:

Shepherstown, West Virginia

thinktheater

oldest town / newest plays / ultimate theater experience

contemporaryamericantheaterfestival

While I am grateful that an American theater festival doesn't spell it "theatre," I am still wondering if everything would have cost more if they had used spaces between the bolded words.

I don't normally buy the sorts of things that are sold in lobbies, and I rarely wear t-shirts, but obviously this week's casual Friday will have to spent inducing people to thinktheater.


* Heck, the Stage probably paid the light bill for a dozen years from the sale of the finest boxed wine in Montgomery County, available before the show and during intermission, thank you very much.

The best excuse ever

The trés nifty person who posted this response to an e-vite has some really lovely (and enviable) body art and I don't, but that's not going to stop me from heisting his regrets for any future time that I have to decline something.

Especially as all my friends have heard "Oh, I can't - I have rehearsal" way too often.

Thanks for thinking of me, but I will be out of town--vacation and getting my tattoo colored in

The bio I didn't write

Leta ([character]) is thrilled to be making her on stage debut in this production of [show] at [company] at [address and website, and possibly Google maps link]. She is totally blown away by the wonderful cast and crew. You go, guys! Leta thanks all the gods for her talent and thinks that the burnt offerings have something to do with it, but if your pet goes missing it wasn't her! (Hee hee hee). During the day she talks on the phone and answers personal e-mail (jk!). Big hugs to Sweetie and all the peeps!!

Red Wind

Today is Raymond Chandler's birthday, so I thought I'd post the only bit of his writing that I've known since I was child. (Thank you, Mr. Grant.)

Those hot dry winds that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.

From Red Wind, which I really must read in its entirety some day.

For Paul and Kathryn

This is from Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore and it's one of my favorite of their madrigals.

(Rose Maybud)
When the buds are blossoming,
Smiling welcome to the spring,
Lovers choose a wedding day –
Life is love in merry May!
Life is love, life is love in merry May!

(Ensemble)
Spring is green –
Fa la la la la la la la!
Summer's rose –
Fa la la la la la la la!
It is sad when summer goes,
Fa la la la la la!
Fa la!

Autumn's gold,
Fa la la la la la la la!
Winter's grey,
Fa la la la la la la la!
Winter still is far away,
Far away —
Fa la la la la!
Fa la la la la la la!

Leaves in autumn fade and fall,
Winter is the end of all.
Spring and summer teem with glee:
Spring and summer, then, for me!

(Dame Hannah)
In the spring-time seed is sown:
In the summer grass is mown:
In the autumn you may reap:
Winter is the time for sleep,
Winter is the time for sleep.

(Ensemble)
Spring is hope –
Fa la la la la la la la!
Summer's joy –
Fa la la la la la la la!
Spring and summer never cloy.
Fa la la la la la!
Fa la!

Autumn, toil –
Fa la la la la la la la!
Winter, rest –
Fa la la la la la la la!
Winter, after all, is best,
After all –
Fa la la la la!
Fa la la la la la la!

Spring and summer pleasure you,
Autumn, aye, and winter too –
Every season has its cheer,
Life is lovely all the year!

My Will

I don't remember how it came up, but the other night after seeing Never the Sinner, David, Laura, Lori, Karen, and I had hit the Royal Mile for a some refreshment and fellowship. Yeah, that was it, fellowship. Anyway, I don't remember how the topic of wills came up, but they did and so I mentioned how much I love the way my will begins. I had it drawn up when I was 22 and moved out of Mom's house (and if you are old enough not to live with your parents you are old enough to have a will). Ed, the lawyer who drew it up for me is another history geek and he used the oldest will form that is still valid in the state of Maryland. And he gave me the then-standard Markland discount, so this will is quite possibly the best $25 I ever spent.

A few years ago I re-typed it to make a few updates and every year somewhere near my birthday I check to make sure that it's still current. If I need to change anything it's a pretty simple matter to correct it, reprint it, and take into to work to be witnessed and notarized.

I used to do dramatic readings of the first two paragraphs (the remaining paragraphs are only of interest to me and the poor souls who will inherit three generations of debts and junk), so if you haven't had a chance to hear it read aloud, here is my

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN:

I, LETA {}, of Montgomery County, Maryland, being of sound and disposing mind, memory, and understanding, and capable of executing a valid deed or contract, considering the certainty of death and the uncertainty of the time thereof, and being desirous to settle my worldly affairs and thereby be the better prepared to leave the world when it shall please the Almighty to call me hence, do hereby make, publish, and declare this my LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT, hereby revoking and annulling all wills and testamentary dispositions heretofore made by me, in manner and form following, that is to say:

FIRST, and principally, I commit my soul into the hands of Almighty God and my body to be cremated. And my will is that all my just debts and funeral expenses be paid by my Personal Representative as soon after my demise as shall be convenient; the reasonableness of the sum of my burial expenses to be in the discretion of my Personal Representative, hereinafter named, statutory limitation, or the rule of the court notwithstanding.

Where were they when I needed them?

WikiHow has an article today on how to Hint for a Kiss from a Guy.* I think I spent most of my teenage years trying - and failing - to get kissed because I was a very late bloomer. I have done what I could to make up for lost time since but when you are 16 and your mother and your 13-year-old sister date more than you do, well that's just embarrassing. "Sweet 16 and never been kissed" wouldn't have been so annoying had it not been true.

Here is something to ponder from that piece: You don't have to be really obvious about it. Many guys will take the hint, especially if they've read one of the many articles that lists this as a sign that a girl wants to be kissed.

Yeah, well, subtle I am not.

I've dated a couple of people who have mentioned that I sometimes have a "kiss me" expression that they have found hard to resist and at least once I was told to stop that but I wasn't doing it on purpose. Okay, I was thinking, "gee, I wish he'd kiss me." But that's not on purpose. I mean, try to stop thinking that. See? Now you'll spend the rest of the day wondering if I am wishing that someone would kiss me.** So, obviously, it would be hard for me to stop thinking that.

Now here is advice I could have used a few years later.

And it turns out that the cute girl at Starbucks is not wishing that you would kiss her.



*Number 6 worked pretty well on David.

**Probably yes.

Desk Dancing

Most people who have met me are aware that I am one lousy dancer. Some times people can tell this within seconds of meeting me and, thus, I am very rarely asked to dance.* And I don't dance voluntarily very often, but I do sometimes desk dance, which is when a great song comes on the radio while I'm at work and I bop along with it. (Desk dancing is very similar to car dancing which is not the same as taxi dancing.) I am actually a pretty good desk dancer.

Anyway, Schelby of 94.7 (The Globe**), played my "e-quest" and we got to hear "A Little Respect" by Erasure. So I turned up my static-y little radio and desk danced. Lots of shoulder and head movement, very little hips or below. My desk dancing karma is good, so I don't usually get co-workers wandering by when I rock out and today was no exception. It was a private little moment for me, Schelby, Erasure, and anyone else who was desk dancing around the area.

But you know the best part? When Schelby announced the e-quest, she pronounced my name correctly. Twice.

*Except at Mike and Shannon's wedding that Steve and I attended several years ago. One of Steve's college friends, whose name is at the very minute escaping me (rats!) (Mike, maybe? Steve's world is as filled with Mikes as mine is with Davids), wandered over to me at one point and said "Two things about this wedding are bothering me. One is that not enough people are dancing and the other is that no one is dancing with you. We can solve of those if you'll dance with me." Lovely, lovely man.

** The completely non-sucky DC-area radio station, of which there are darn few. For a market as large as this one, our radio choices are amazingly poor. So I pretty much listen to either NPR on WAMU or to 94.7

How to sell more tickets?

I got an e-mail from ESP today announcing that tickets are going on sale for Side Show. The part that really got my attention was this note at the bottom of the e-mail:

This announcement of for informational purposes only and no obligation to attend is required on your part.

I hadn't realized that the rest of their shows were compulsory. That probably explains their excellent sales figures...

Perhaps the Stage should consider a similar message on our e-mails. Only without that odd little "of for" construction.

One I like

Ira sent me a list of "medieval pick up lines." Hidden among the usual run of single-entendres like "Hey, Princess, you wouldn't happen to know where a lonely knight could scabbard his sword, would you?" was this rather poetic bit:

If the Gods would grant me into anything of my liking, I'd become your tears. Born in your eyes, live on your cheek, and die on your lips.

Now *that's* acting

Actors from time to time say things that would never come out of their mouths in real life.

Two of my favorite examples:

I did a production of California Suite a few years ago and one of my castmates, Russell, was playing Billy, who is seeing his ex-wife Hannah for the first time in several years. All you really need to know here is that the character Billy was played by Alan Alda in the movie back when Mr. Alda was the poster boy for the sensitive male and that Russell is politically somewhere to the right of the John Birch society. Anyway, at one point when Hannah and Billy are talking about their daughter, Billy says "If you respect her as a person, you have to respect her right to make a free choice." Russell came off stage after a rehearsal and I grinned at him and said "Now that's acting!" and he agreed.

When David was in Six Degrees of Separation, his character, Larkin, at one point happily exclaims "We're going to be in the movie version of Cats!" I think David would rather snack on broken glass than be in the movie - or any other - version of Cats. Now that's acting.

In Significant Others, the one-act that David and I will be performing at the Silver Spring Stage one-act festival (first weekend, August 16 - 19), there is not really a "now that's acting" moment, but there is one bit that for people who know the both of us is somewhat unlikely. The run of dialogue goes something like this:

Husband: I have disclosed everything that I have.
Wife: Except for your stock options.
Husband: Which have no value until they're sold.
Wife: They have net asset value. I keep track of it every day. I know the value of your holdings better than you do.

The chance that I would know something that contained numbers better than David is pretty small. And the chance that I would know something regarding finance better than David is vanishingly small.

On the flip side are what I call "no acting required" moments and we have one of those in Significant Others as well. Sometimes talking with my beloved is like testifying in a Congressional hearing as he does a simultaneous fact check on my decidedly trivial conversation, and thus this dialogue was probably written as Steve followed us around and took notes:

Wife: We are on the veranda, consorting ...
Husband: Is this a veranda?
Wife: For our purposes, it is.
Husband: Are we consorting?
Wife: You bet we are.

No acting required. None.

My project after Significant Others is called Taking Leave and I'll play the pain-in-the-butt eldest sister. I leave it as an exercise for the reader as to whether that will be an NTA or an NAR performance.

A Gift from a Playwright

Steve quotes a couple of lines of this poem in Significant Others and so I had to look it up.

Recuerdo (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

We were very tired, we were very merry-
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable-
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry-
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, ‘Good morrow, mother!’ to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, ‘God bless you!’ for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

The hardest thing about directing

Without question, the most difficult thing about directing is having to tell a friend - especially a very talented and easy to work with friend - that you are "going another way" with a role.

A director friend of mine is composing several of those messages right now. And I'm sending him a mental hug or two.

Well, duh

I could have told you this. It costs to be gluten-free. In fact, I did. You read it here first.

The article points out: "The study found that gluten-free food was 240 per cent more expensive on average, and was carried at 36 per cent of supermarkets and 41 per cent of upmarket shops, forcing shoppers online, or to specialty health food shops."

Some Whole Foods (not the ones near me) carry products from their Gluten-Free Bakehouse. The Cranberry Orange Scones and the Peanut Butter cookies are both rather good. (Remember that the gold standard for gluten-free is "not bad" and that the average is "not terrible." So this really is an achievement.)

However.

Here is the ingredient list for the Peanut Butter cookies: Peanut butter, butter, brown sugar, sugar, eggs, tapioca starch, rice flour, potato starch, soy flour, natural vanilla flavor, salt, xanthan gum, baking soda.

Now explain to me why they cost $5.99 for eight of them. How do I remember the price off the top of my head? Because that's 5.99 American Dollars for eight cookies. How could I not remember?

The Cranberry Orange Scones [Rice flour, tapioca starch, butter, orange juice concentrate, cream, eggs, dried cranberries (cranberries, sugar, sunflower oil), sugar, potato starch, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate), xanthan gum, natural orange flavor, salt] were $5.49 for either four or six of them.

An entire package of Oreos is what? $3.49 or something? And they go on sale sometimes.

So, yes, Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, it costs more to be gluten-free.

Next week they follow up on an observation my sister made when she was five: Eat fat, get fat.

Please connect me to JUniper 7-5423

JUniper 7-5423 was my phone number when I was growing up. Or mostly was because by the time that I came along, exchange names were on their way out, although they could still be found in ads and in the phone book. I just never heard anyone say them, or at least not seriously. (At one point in The Man Who Came to Dinner, Maggie is asked for the telephone of the hotel, the Mansion House, which she gives as Mesalia 32, so I've said that on stage a bunch of times.)

Because I'd only read them, in my head my number was "Juniper-7-5423," but I've recently heard people (okay, actors, whatever) running the five numbers together, so it would be "Juniper-75423" which just seems harder to remember to me and I have no idea which was preferred. Perhaps, it was an either/either thing.

David is kind enough to make me calling cards ever since the time he saw me give someone one of my deposit tickets for my checking account because neither of us had any paper handy. (I tore the account number off of the bottom, but he was still appalled.) He lists my contact info and this blog's address and includes a pretty little graphic. They are lovely and much nicer looking than my boss's business cards. And because David has heard me rant about the tiny type on business cards (tons of white space, medium grey print the size of bacteria - what is up with that?), they are in a nice, clear, easy to read, reasonable font.

And now they'll have my exchange on them! David mentioned The Telephone Exchange Name Project the other night and sure enough David Pescovitz posted a link to the TEN Project on Boing Boing yesterday which David forwarded to me. I reviewed Ma Bell's list of Officially Recommended Exchange Names, got all misty-eyed about JUniper, and then selected BLackburn for my mobile number. My office number begins with "57" which was reserved for radio operators which means that it has no historically correct exchange name, so I've "created" KRypton for my office number.

The next time you see me, be sure to check out my spiffy-retro calling cards.

Why it's time to go back to rehearsing

David and I were on the phone last night and I had just told him something (deeply personal and very meaningful, but no matter) and there was silence at his end of the line because he was distracted by a tv ad for a freakin' big box store. He started to describe it to me.

"Oh, is that the one with the woman who wants to be her daughters' hero because she can put up shelves now?"

"No, but there's a lot of soft focus and people wandering around outside. There is a woman."

"Oh! Does she have lots of red hair?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. That's Sue. She moved into the building a few years ago and the garden was sad and desolate so she went to the store and got lots of gardening advice and bought lots of gardening stuff. The garden has turned their apartment complex into a home."

Dialogue reconstructed from my rather poor memory for that sort of thing because who the hell takes notes when she's on the phone chatting with her Man?

How to write a pardon

"By My Hand, and for the good of the State, the bearer has done what has been done."

Cardinal Richelieu, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père.

APM, NPR, PRI

In A Prairie Home Companion's weekly newsletter, Garrison Keillor prints a letter from a listener. This week's regards distribution credit. Geeky as I am, I have still been guilty of public radio conflation and I'm glad to know that Mr. Keillor doesn't hold it against me.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
Does it ever irritate you when people refer to APHC as an "NPR" show? Because, as far as I know, it was NPR that turned down the show back in 1978 and it's American Public Media that distributes it now.

It's astonishing to see how consistently this error is made. I've seen it in AP stories, on public radio station Web sites and even on the Web sites of musical artists who are careful to point out that they have appeared on your show. Or am I wrong?

Edmund M.
Energy, IL

PHC was never distributed by NPR, and you're right about NPR declining to distribute it lo these many years ago, but no, it doesn't bother me. NPR is the organization in Washington and "NPR" is the common term for public radio, sort of like kleenex means tissue and xerox means photocopy, even if you're using Scott Tissue and an HP copier. I suppose the NPR references bother the folks at APM and they probably have someone whose job it is to call up the AP and complain, but I don't care. I am just very very grateful that NPR didn't pick up the show for distribution back then because if they had, I'm pretty sure the show would've died a painful death by committee. They can have all the credit the AP wants to give them, so long as I don't have to report to some vice-president in Washington.

How to return $5

This works especially well with guys who don't know me well yet.

"It was great seeing you. I'll call you the next time I'm in town. Buy yourself something pretty."

Personal Shopper

David and I were at Target the other day and I made two purchases: a pair of shoes and a tube of lipstick. As is usually the case with me, the more expensive item was the quicker shop. David pointed to a pair of cute, little platforms (at 5'7", a style I normally don't spend a lot of time on)* which we agreed would look spiffy when we go on a real date**. Tried them on, decided to buy them, moved on. Three - five minutes, maybe.

Back in college Sarah told me that every woman needs a tube of "good whore-red" lipstick. It took me years to realize that in that phrase "good" was modifying "red," not "whore," but no matter; I was out and needed another. The lipstick, of course, required scouring every make-up related rack in the store and comparing and contrasting colors and brands and prices and types. I would hold a tube up to my face and get David's feedback on how it worked with my coloring. I'm a winter, but I still avoid reds that are too blue.

To my great delight, I found a L’Oréal color (#350) called British Red which fits the bill. It's a true red without a blue undertone, it looks fabulous, and it wasn't too expensive. (woot!) How long did it take to finalize this choice? 10 minutes, possibly 15. And he has a better eye for this sort of thing than I do, so having him there probably cut the decision time in half.

David's first real experience with my shopping inversion was back in January when we went to buy me a new winter coat (Christmas present. Isn't he the cutest thing?). We went to Macy's, I think, and he pulled out 3 or 4 coats and I pulled out two. Tried them all on. Chose the dark green, wool/cashmere Ellen Tracy trench. Twenty minutes. Later that day we stopped at the market for a few things, including some body wash for me to keep at his house. So many brands, so many smells, so many attributes.

For the record, I don't really like body wash or lotion that smells like fruits or vegetables,*** so that elimination was pretty quick. I found a nice "clean cotton" smelling one whose price didn't offend me. Twenty five minutes.

Yep. It takes me longer to pick out a $5.99 bottle of body wash that I will use up in a few months than to pick out a $200 coat that I will wear for years.

I will be wearing my spiffy new color today, in case you'd like to admire David's consulting handiwork.

*I was 5'7" by the time I was 12, when platforms were also popular. I bought a pair of 5-inchers, bringing me to 6' at a time when all the boys in my class were 5'4". (Idiot) But David's 6-something (1? 2? Who can tell with his Alan Alda slouch), so the additional altitude is no longer such a bad thing.

**Real date means doing the sorts of things that regular people do instead of the things that theater people do. Like go to dinner somewhere with tablecloths.

*** Herbs, spices, tea, and flowers are all fine. I don't know whether ginger, a root, counts as a vegetable or not, but it smells like a spice to me.

Using his powers for good

John the Flirt and I share a trait. (Okay, we share a bunch.) We talk to strangers and for both of us it usually works out well. Not only does John talk to strangers, but they talk to him. He seems to have met another of our people at a recent Nats game and he was able to combine his superhero level of social skills with his love of the game.

Like almost all tiny children, she thought I was awesome

It ain't just the tiny children, sweetie.

Local Shmocal

I've been reading a fair bit lately about eating locally lately, which seems to be a good idea. Eating locally, that is, not just reading about it, although they start to lose me when I consider how little tea is grown in Maryland.

And I'm completely off the page during Mt. Rainier cherry season. Forget the lips of painted Maypoles, these darling pink orbs are the real kissing cherries.

When my boss noticed how happy I was that I had some, he asked what the difference is between the Mt. Rainiers and regular cherries (outside of the price), I told him that the MRs are milder, sweeter, and prettier. Sort of like the difference between me and him. And I gave him a couple, both to prove my point and to ensure my continued employment.

I'm having dinner with the lovely Fencergal tonight and guess what I'm bringing to the party?

I wouldn't care if they had to be trucked in from Mars, I'd still be all over 'em.

But then I could never hear it again

My friends and I noticed several years ago that as soon as we buy a copy of a movie, we never see it again. If we're playing flippy-channels and run across it, we don't stop because "we have that on DVD" and we never seem to pop in the DVD. I don't know why, I'm sure, but we don't.

So please don't buy me this.

Every year on Independence Day, NPR staffers* read the Declaration of Independence from start to finish. I more or less plan my 4th of July morning around hearing that and by the time we get to with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor, I'm all teary eyed. In fact, I'm a little verklempt just typing that phrase.

There's something about that document that appeals to so many parts of my personality: the need to lay before other nations a tidy list; the "if we don't hang together we shall surely hang separately" teamwork; and the willingness to put their names to it and take the consequences. They were far from perfect, but they were better men, and far more heroic, than I.

The Declaration itself tells us early on that our country will never be perfect or even not hypocritical: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. In the 18th Century the set of "all men" - at least in Virginia - meant all male, white, Protestant, landowners over the age of 21. The rest of us were not so equal. And many of us are still not so equal.

So we'll never be perfect but we keep trying. Jefferson said “I am among those who think well of the human character generally. I consider man as formed for society, and endowed by nature with those dispositions which fit him for society… his mind is perfectible to a degree of which we cannot as yet form any conception.” But now I'm digressing into the Constitution, which for some reason I find less stirring.

Anyway, if you miss the reading tomorrow morning, the text is available on The Archives Declaration page.

Of course, if you're shopping, I wouldn't mind this.

*On-air staffers, of course, I never get to hear Stacey or Bej reciting our grievances, more's the pity. Although if they did, and if I got to choose which one Stacey would read, well, duh, it would have to be For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury because that would sound as though my G&S-hating pal were decrying the absence of that operetta. Which would be so neat.

How to make a director happy

Send this e-mail before rehearsals begin:

The question marked conflicts that I listed in late August have been resolved. [Brief explanation] so my only conflicts during the during period are: [Three dates, only one of which was scheduled for a rehearsal.]

And, yep, that means I've been cast. Details will be posted in the sidebar, probably tomorrow.

And, yep, that means that you can expect an uptick in my posting rate as I avoid line memorization. Much dusting and vacuuming will also be accomplished.

The Nekkid Scottish Play

Okay, first another Pinter story.

I went to see a couple of Pinter's short plays up at Rep Stage and sitting behind me were a couple of high school juniors (or seniors) and their chaperon. Or just an adult friend, I dunno. Anyway, the scenic design included a big painting. The young lady wondered aloud who the artist was and I said that it was Magritte. "Of course! That's it!" (Okay, sure I could have kept my mouth shut and let her wonder in vain, how likely was that? Get real.)

At which point, after identifying a piece styled after the work of a Belgian surrealist, I became (wait for it), the Pinter expert. So they asked me what they should look for in the two pieces we were about to see. Almost as if they thought the evening was going to be on the final and for all I know, it was. I thought for a minute and then said that perhaps my best advice was that they keep in mind that sometimes what was being said was the least important thing that was happening.

They digested this for a moment and then the young man said, "Oh. Like Shakespeare?"

"Uhm, no. Not like that all. Shakespeare is all about the words." And then I spent the last few minutes before curtain silently trying to come up with a better 180-degree difference than Pinter and Shakespeare.

Which brings me to what I'm calling The Nekkid Scottish Play. The Washington Shakespeare Company decided to do the bard's show which is set in the far north of Britain (you know which one I mean, right?) in the nude. Yep. Naked as they day they was born. The article about the show in the Washington Post was called "Staying Within Their Costume Budget."

I hadn't intended to see the show, but it was lit by my pal, Ayun, and any evening spent admiring Ayun's handiwork is an evening well spent. Even if I am acquainted with some of the actors in the cast and will find myself making small talk with them in theater lobbies in the near future. That won't be weird.

After the first few minutes the nakediddity (or however Radar spells that) wasn't that big a deal anymore. It stopped being distracting by the end of scene one and the direction and performances were both good enough that I didn't much care if they were wearing crowns and tabards or just hairy, dirty skin.

But I am left to wonder why. Not why I was no longer distracted, but why they were naked. I couldn't think of anything in How Not to be King or Even Get Kings that was better expressed sans-culottes. If anything was distracting, it was the why, why, why in my head. My theory is that Shakespeare's history plays could be collected into one volume and "Reigning Justly and Wisely; or Not Coming to a Bad End by Being Evil 101" could be taught from it. (Informally called, of course, How to Be King.)

According to Shakespeare and his rather OCD approach to knowing one's place, kings are chosen by something greater than ourselves and ambitious self-starters like the Thane and R III come to learn that they can't jump the line. And a king is every inch a king even when hairy, dirty, and naked, so a naked king, if a rightful king, is still a king.

And as people have heard that I saw it, pretty near the only questions they asked me about it were "Why?" and "Did it add anything?" My answers: "Dunno" and "Not really."

The only thing that came close to being offensive about it was a tasteless joke posted to the G&S list to which I subscribe and WSC can't be held responsible for that.

Tonight I'm going back for a reading of Measure to Measure, which I am assuming will be fully clothed. In the meantime, here's a story from "The Onion," Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended, that could not possibly be more apropos.

Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper an' Snork

I know this so you should, too: According to Kurt Andersen, Bob Marley so loved the theme to The Banana Splits that he incorporated it into "Buffalo Soldiers."

Tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la

became

Woy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy!

Which means that every time I hear "Buffalo Soldiers," the Banana Splits song is brain-gummed into my mind. Really perks up the work day.

For those of you who missed the stoned genius of late 60s "kid" shows, here's the full theme song. If you don't want it stuck in your head, I'd look away now.

The Banana Splits
Written by Ritchie Adams & Mark Barkan

One banana, two banana, three banana, four
Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more.
Over hill and highway the banana buggies go
Comin' to bring you the Banana Split show
Makin' up a mess of fun, makin' up a mess of fun
Lots of fun for everyone

(CHORUS)
Tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la

Four banana, three banana, two banana, one
All bananas playin' in the bright warm sun.
Flippin' like a pancake, popping like a cork
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper an' Snork

(REPEAT CHORUS)

Two banana, four banana, one banana, three
Swingin' like a bunch on monkeys, hangin' from a tree.
Hey there, ev'rybody, won't you come along and see
How much like Banana Splits ev'ryone can be

(REPEAT CHORUS)

Makin up a mess of fun
Makin up a mess of fun
Happiness for ev'ryone
Tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la

The words were so much alike

As a Christian, a history buff, and a G&S geek, I have three words in my vocabulary over which I always stumble, so I find that I get about halfway through one, back up, and then pronounce it syllable-by-syllable as though I had only learned it ten minutes previously. Another one of them crops up in Never the Sinner two or three times and I am so used to my own issues with them that I cannot be sure that Jacob didn't pronounce it all four ways.

They are:

From the church - Calvary - the hill where Christ was crucified;
From history - Cavalry - horse-mounted soldiers; and
From G&S - Calverly - the Colonel in Patience.

The judge in Never the Sinner - to whom much legal bickering is ostensibly addressed but who is not seen on stage - is a Caverly.

Oy.

Now it's really summer

94.7 just played one of my favorite Jimmy Buffett songs! (And, of course, being the shallow thing that I am, my other favorite is the Jeopardy-answer "Fins." Of course, I also really do love "Why don't we get drunk and screw" but that's not all that deep or obscure, is it?)

And if you ditch the big warm bun and the cold draft beer, I can totally sign off on a burger Jimmy's way.

Cheeseburger in Paradise

Tried to amend my carnivorous habits.
Made it nearly seventy days,
Losin' weight without speed, eatin' sunflower seeds,
Drinkin' lots of carrot juice and soakin' up rays.

But at night I'd have these wonderful dreams
Some kind of sensuous treat.
Not zucchini, fettuccini, or bulgur wheat,
But a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat.

Cheeseburger is paradise.
Heaven on earth with an onion slice.
Not too particular, not too precise.
I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise.

I like mine with lettuce and tomato,
Heinz Fifty-seven and French fried potatoes.
Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer.
Well, good God Almighty, which way do I steer
For my cheeseburger in paradise.

Heard about the old time sailor men,
They eat the same thing again and again;
Warm beer and bread they say could raise the dead.
Well, it reminds me of the menu at a Holiday Inn.

But times have changed for sailors these days.
When I'm in port I get what I need;
Not just Havanas or banana or daiquiris,
But that American creation on which I feed!

Cheeseburger is paradise
medium rare with mustard'd be nice
Not too particular, not too precise
I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise.

I like mine with lettuce and tomato
Heinz 57 and french fried potatoes
Big kosher pickle and a cold draught beer
Well, good god Almighty which way do I steer

For a cheeseburger in paradise
Makin' the best of every virtue and vice.
Worth every damn bit of sacrifice
To get a cheeseburger in paradise;
To be a cheeseburger in paradise.
I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise.

Reading Plants

I really enjoy Ketzel Levine's stories on NPR and now they're hosting a blog that she's writing about plants. Clearly - and no surprise - she is more informal in a blog setting than on the air. My favorite paragraph from the first Talking Plants post:

I am no Pollyanna poster child for emotional equanimity. (Click here for the TP list of Preferred Pharmaceuticals. OK, I was kidding. Stop clicking.) But don't let a lifetime of anti-depressants fool you. I am a gardener. Are you a gardener? Gardeners do not put plants in the ground in the hopes that they will suffer and perish. Gardeners plant to see tomorrow.

So it looks like I have another to add to the blog roll.

Thanks to David for the formatting assist.

Like satisfaction, only different

Words to live by.

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need

M. Jagger/K. Richards

It's time

I've got a couple of auditions this week and it's a good thing. I'm getting that itchy feeling in my palms that means that I need to go read for people.

It's sort of like Snoopy's stomach clock. I guess I've been sleeping on top of the doghouse long enough.

Unless no one casts me, in which case it's more like Charlie Brown and the kite. Or Charlie Brown and the football.

At least it's not like Linus and the Great Pumpkin. Let's be grateful for that.

Maybe this will work

You know how it goes. You update a form and distribute it, asking people to delete the previous version. Except that they don't. They keep using the old form which is exactly the sort of negligence that could bring American business to the point of total collapse. You redistribute the form and ask again but with no better luck.

We have a couple of forms here that have been updated a few times but some folks are just stubborn, I guess, and are always at least one version behind. Well, if they won't do their bit to save the American economy, maybe they'll cooperate in order to save the planet. Here's the e-mail I sent to a couple of folks yesterday:

Here is the most current [name of form deleted to be on the safe side] form. It's newer and shinier than the old one. It's a thing of beauty and a joy until we revise it again some time in the future.

Using the old form will increase global warming* and may possibly allow dangerous levels of both carbon and ozone, not to mention CFCs, to be released into the atmosphere. Using the new form will reduce our carbon footprint in the future.

Please dispose of the old form properly. Please use the new form.

If this doesn't work, I may have to take stronger action, although I don't know what that might be right now. Maybe I'll report them to the Department Homeland Security because using the old form doesn't help keep Americans safe the way that using the new form does.


*And you're probably wondering how a form that is an electronic document could have any kind of carbon emissions, but don't spend too much time thinking about that. Just nod and smile.

Solstice

Okay, there's this episode of I Dream of Jeannie, where Jeannie and Maj. Nelson were going to have their pre-wedding blood tests. No one thinks anything of it until either Tony or Roger asks Jeannie if her blood is weird in any way. "Oh, no, my blood is just like anyone else's. I have red corpuscles, and white corpuscles, and green corpuscles." And, of course, wackiness ensues.

I think that I have green corpuscles, too. I think that they're derived from chlorophyll or however that works. (I'm not clear on the biology here because I failed to pay sufficient attention in science class because I was "bright but would not work." Just ask my teachers.)

I like to be out in the sunshine. Much as I love "big weather" like thunder and lightening and driving rain or blizzards, I love to be out in the sunshine. If the weather is warm (around 80 degrees) and sunny and not too humid, it's lovely to be outside. The sun warms my skin, vitamin D gets made, and the whole photosynthesis thing kicks in. Eating outside, breathing real air instead of chilled air? Bring it on! Sunshine on my shoulders is like a good back-rub or something. I think I'm most relaxed when I've just slightly desiccated.

I don't know if this is because I have spent the last many years working in cold offices or if it's a throwback to my infancy when Mom would put me outside in my playpen and I'd get all peach colored, which back then was considered healthier than now. Like smoking.

When I was a child and a teenager all the red in my hair would come out in the summer. By September it was nearer auburn than brunette.

And I hate sunblock which feels like a coat of Latex paint. So it's probably just as well that I am the sort of bone-lazy person who doesn't get outside to play nearly as often as she should. And I've never been very good at tanning, so I didn't devote the hours to teen-age rotisserie that my sister did.

But I love to sit outside with a good book and a glass of ice tea, wiggling my toes in the sunlight and despairing that my legs will always be far too pale instead of, say tennis player brown. Because even when I play tennis, only my upper body tans. (Why is that? It's annoying.)

Like a lizard or a tomato plant, I store the sunlight so that I can use it later for energy. I mean, sunshine on my shoulders (yes, I am trying to stick that song in your head) makes me sleepy, but sunshine stored in my shoulders powers all that puttering that I like to do.

And I've had some odd tans in my life. Like the two or three years in college when I wore those cute canvas China flats every single day, winter and summer, and I got a tan on the tops of my feet but not my toes, not to mention the white strap line, which looked as though I had spent the day walking through dust. Or the years when I did 18th Century re-enactment and had a bronze glow on my face, my décolletage, and on my arms below the elbow, but was arsenic-white everywhere else.

Now, of course, I spend most of my free time in theaters, including on lovely, sunny Sunday afternoons, so I'm pretty Casper-y all over. Which is for the best, really, because I don't believe in purposely aging my skin. If I want to look older I could just squint until the crow's feet set, I guess, and why has that not caught on, I wonder?

That's for sure

Liza is a very smart woman who has written a lot of insightful things, but this one definitely is in my top 10 for "many relationships and most of my entire family would be different if we could pound this into our stupid heads and act on it instead of just thinking that it's true."

It is so important to try to find out what is going on in the heads of the people we care about, and telepathy doesn’t work reliably as a source of information.

Yet another reason why it's more important that Liza be able to marry than me.

On purpose

And while we were ordering food last night, one of the folks asked if the chicken tenders were breaded* This got my attention because it's usually the first question someone with CD asks, at least in the early stages of the learning curve. I wondered if my companion was recently diagnosed with the World's Most Boring Autoimmune Disorder, but then I saw that he was drinking a Michelob Ultra, which, while "low-carb" (2.6 grams) is still beer and thus is basically liquid poison (to be overly dramatic about it) to the gluten-free community, what with all that malted barley.

His order was for some kind of salad with no crutons and the penny dropped. He doesn't have CD. He's doing Atkins or South Beach or something similar. Some kind of voluntary exile into low-carb, no carb land.

I had forgotten that there are people who will do that by choice. They are ....weird.


*Answer: Of course they are. That's like asking if the cupcakes are frosted. If they weren't breaded, they would have been called "grilled," usually a CD "safe" word.

NVTA 2007

After the NVTA one-act festival awards last night a few of us went off to the 4 Ps for a "post game" drink/bite to eat. Sure, we all have food and booze at home, but then we couldn't do the always enjoyable "analysis" of the evening.

The upside of the awards was that - from what I heard about the shows I didn't see and what I remember of the ones I did - I think that the judges largely gave the right awards to the right shows.* Not 100%, of course, but that never happens. And the show that I loved a lot and thought was done excellently by all concerned copped some of the big awards, so I regarded spending $10 to get to applaud for them again as money well spent.

The downside was that the judges largely got it right and what's more fun than insinuating that the highly respected, volunteer judges who put in a hours and hours of work and generally find something positive to say no matter how wretched a show might be and who are taking those hours from their actual work lives as theather professionals, what's more fun than insinuating that they must clinically insane crack-addicted drunks and then trashing the horrible shows one hated that got a bunch of completely undeserved honors because now those untalented maroons are going to prace around like they just got Tony awards, not that they would know good quality work yadda, yadda, etc, etc.

Ahhh. Good times.

Anyway, we got settled in and ordered and because the 4Ps carries my favorite Scotch, I got to order m'self a Laphroaig (pronounced, La-froyg), a simply lovely, smokey, peaty masterpiece that should never be drunk any way except neat. Yummmmmmmm. (I first heard about it in a Dick Francis book and decided to try it and unlike some other things that I read about in books and then decided to try, the Laphroaig worked out very well indeed.) None of the ladies had ever tried the Islay Blesssing, so I passed mine around, creating a bond in us that may last for all time. The men were drinking beer, so we don't have a bond with them.

When I go the Maryland festival or the Eastern States, I don't know folks as well, so the socializing is always lighter, maybe more superficial. To really get into the fine print of these sorts of things, your local festival is the way to go. Like family reunions, it's much easier to raise the eyebrow to one's sisters and cousins about the in-laws than it is to one's third cousin-once-removed about yet another branch. Of course, it's safer to keep the subject of that sort of thing the long deceased reprobates who feature in the colorful stories, I guess, but who's going to do that?

Art and artistry may be the foundation of theater, along with dedication and teamwork, but the pillars are definitely the drinking, the flirting, and the gossip. At least they were last night.

*I know a lot of very talented people who participated in the festival and did not receive a bunch of nominations/awards. If you are one of them and read this, I think you're great, really great, and deserve all kinds of awards. Stupid judges. What do they know? A travesty, that's what it was. Just a travesty. Okay? Okay.

**Note: Of course, none of us would ever do that. Theater isn't competitive. Theater people are only kind and generous. And we can only admire the bravery and dedication that goes into putting on a show anywhere ever. Any snarky comments made at these sorts of gatherings should only be used for comarison purposes. This blog post should not be construed as recommending a particular course of action. Should you wish to do a post-show analysis, the advice of a competant professional should be sought.

Time I had some Tylenol

They're testing the fire alarms here today. During the work day. So I'm not tense and jumpy, not me, though the last couple of hours have been randomly punctuated by the kind of loud, piercing sounds that we're not supposed to ignore.

One of our staffers, who sits in the large room with several other people came to my area because she didn't want to disturb the other folks with her hiccups. "Don't worry about it," I said, "none of them can hear any more."

At one point our CEO asked where he had to go to rip the wires out of the wall so that we could have some peace. I told him that if he did that, he'd have the gratitude of the entire staff right up to the time when we all died in the fire.

Instant replay

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a great show for children. Well, maybe for older children. Much older children. Because while I was all awash in nostalgia (and wondering why, if they had gone to the trouble to write Sally in, she doesn't get to call Linus her Sweet Babboo?) at least one child at Saturday night's performance wasn't quite as familiar with the Peanuts gang as the rest of us.

"I don't get it!" he complained fairly early on. Like about 8:05 or so. Later on, around 8:10, he did. "Oh, I get it!" All of his color commentary was loud enough for the entire room to hear, much to his mother's dismay. (That whole outside voices, inside voices, during-the-performance voices just hasn't sunk in for him yet, you know?)

But the best was probably during one of Chuck's bits. Chuck, as Linus (and Linus ain't just Sally's Sweet Babboo, let me tell you), was sucking his thumb. He removed the thumb from his mouth, considered it, and said "I think I'm losing my flavor!" Most of the audience chuckled, but our own John Madden, Jr. really loved it. He guffawed and repeated "I think I'm losing my flavor!!" If he'd had a Telestrator handy, he could have light-penned the thumb-from-mouth maneuver for us.

Sometimes one's $11 merely gets an evening of light entertainment, but when we're really lucky some one in the audience is discovering why theater - and good ol' Charlie Brown - is so great after all.

The Quotable Barbara

Barbara was handling concessions at intermission on Saturday night and when I told her that my hair was all tangled because John and I drove over in his convertible and she gave me that Barbara look and said "Oh, cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it." When I told that I liked that one she modestly replied, "Well, I have teenagers."

Scalzi on Edwin

Because even SF writer (and cool opinionated blogger) John Scalzi has more time for Edwin Booth than the Folger.

The Family Assassin

A tragic oversight

The always nifty Sam Waterston is hosting a series for the Folger Shakespeare Library to commemorate its 75th anniversary. I listened intently to the first episode (of three) in which we worked our way forward through American history and the history of the performance of Shakespeare in America sort of casually waiting for a mention of Edwin Booth. There was none.

And while there is a spiffy picture of the lovely and talented Mr. Waterston on the series website, that doesn't make up for omitting any reference to possibly the greatest American Shakespearean actor of the 19th century. And the founder and primary funder of The Players.

Sarah Vowell and I are understandably disappointed.

Europe in DC

Because I'm between shows, I have no plans tomorrow, so I'm taking the Metro to Europe! No, no, I haven't been drinking at my desk. The European Union is having an Embassies' Open House on Saturday so I'll take the Metro to Dupont Circle and ride their special shuttle around to the different embassies, tour their buildings, taste their food, listen to their music, and admire their dances. I think I'll skip having my face painted, though.

I'll go the Embassies of Ireland and Germany (the Brits aren't participating) as an homage to my European heritage, but then I'm hitting Bulgaria specifically for the food because I've never tried Bulgarian food and have no idea what it's like. If Maureen is able to join me we'll go to Hungary, I'm sure, and I'll like to check out several other countries I've always wanted to go to.

There's a "Passport Stamp Collection Area" and I'll see how many stamps I can get. It's tempting to bring my real passport, but they probably wouldn't stamp it, more's the pity.

And after I spend the day traipsing around "Europe," I'll spend the evening doing a very American thing - going with friends (John and Jeff and Amy) to see other friends (Andy, Chuck, and Susanna) in a musical based on a comic strip (by Charles Schultz). And probably eating dinner at a chain restaurant.

Happy Anniversary to Me!

Today marks my 8th anniversary here at my job. Our office covers three floors and I've worked on all of them. I've supported various people, have been generally appreciated, and have often been treated better than I deserved. *

I started here as a temp-to-perm when I was still temping for an unnamed owner of a major sports franchise. And his sister. I'd been temping for about two years (and a year and half for the sports mogul) because I enjoyed it but I'd reached the point where working without a 401(k) or health benefits was becoming an unwise choice.

So I called my contact at Kelly (I was a Kelly Girl!) and told her that I needed a "real job" and she set up an interview for me here. I met with lots of folks, many of whom I still work with, took a typing test, and told at least one person that as I lived three miles away I would never call in and say that I couldn't make it to work because of the weather. And I'm pretty hard core, so I haven't.

I started in late April and by early May was being asked when I could become a full-time, permanent employee. I thought we would date a while longer before getting married, myself, but the company wanted to put that ring on my finger and so on May 10, 1999, I started here officially.

Last year on my anniversary my "Big B" Boss gave me a project to work on telling me that it was extremely important and that if it were done wrong someone would go to prison and that he would make sure that it was me, not him. Most folks would have just given me a card, you know?

I've worked for this company longer than anywhere else I've ever been and (so far) I like it very much. Sitting where I do, I get what I think of as "Work TV" because I'm in a corner near some important and interesting folks and I enjoy listening to them. I'm also handy on the spot when my "Big B" Boss decides it time to wind up my "Little B" boss and I have told him more than once that if he has time to wind people up that way he isn't going to nearly enough meetings.

So far I've earned by 5-year pen and pencil set and am aiming next for my 10-year clock. I wonder what the 50-year gift is.


* This is probably the dominant theme in my life and one of the reasons why I am an optimistic Christian. If my friends and colleagues are better to me than I deserve, why not assume the same for God? And, in fact, God is better to me than I deserve.

At the Wedding March

by Gerard Manley Hopkins


God with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other’s comfort kind:
Deep, deeper than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind.

Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Deals triumph and immortal years.

Pre-show entertainment

David and I saw The Drawer Boy final matinee today and sitting next to us were an older couple. The wife was fussing over her husband a bit and as the lights went down, she asked him "Can you see all right?"

Once it was fully black he answered her "Nope. It's too dark in here."

I'll bet he's been amusing himself at her expense for forty or so years now and that if anyone got the dry humor and deadpan sarcasm of the show, he did.

One of the team

Michael J. Fox: Teamwork seems to be a real theme on the show and in your life.

Denis Leary: Where I come from in show business, there were always, like five other people in a scene, and we wanted to make the scene as good as we could because we knew we all looked better that way. That was true when I was doing stand-up in the clubs in Boston too -- there was a sense that we were all in it together, so if we had to drive up to New Hampshire to do a show, there'd be four of us in the car -- one guy driving, another guy holding the beer, another guy probaby had the weed on him, you know what I mean? Everybody's got a responsibility. I think that the best people I've ever worked with -- Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog [1997], Clint Eastwood in True Crime [1999], Chris Walken -- all the legends that I worked with that I really admire all want you to be as good as they're going to be, because first it takes the pressure off them, and second it makes the whole thing better.

In the May 2007 Interview

Or, perhaps, "nice rack"

You Are a Flawless Beauty!

When it comes to beauty, you spare no expense - and it shows You're the kind of woman a man would launch a thousand ships for It's hard for anyone to beat you in the beauty department But remember, it's okay to show a flaw or too - you've got plenty to spare

What Type of Beauty Are You?

Uh huh. Sure. I'm sure that everyone will buy into this one. Of course, after what happened this morning, maybe it's true.

I got on the elevator today wearing an outfit I'm rather fond of that involves a spiffy red top with a reasonably low scooped neckline. The woman riding with me was probably in her 60s and English isn't her first language. It sounded to me as though she were speaking some dialect of French, but I could be very wrong here. Anyway, she leaned over, poked me in the chest right below the collar bone and said something that included two words that I understood: "very nice."

As I say, I think the rest of it was in a French dialect, so as I was about to ask if she spoke French - and the very way that "Parlez-vous Français?" comes out of my mouth alerts genuine Francophones that I am not of their number and encourages them to speak back to me very slowly - the elevator opened and another woman got on. The first woman then said something else which may have contained the word "belle," another one I understand.

I smiled and said "merci" as she got off of the elevator. After all, I didn't heard her say "putain," so I wasn't thanking her for calling me a whore. Then I turned to the second woman and said "I think that she gave me a compliment, but I don't know she said."

The second woman smiled and said that the first woman had said that I was very beautiful. And her smile - for your information - was sincere and there was no insulting pause before "very beautiful."

So it may have been an accurate translation and it may not, but whatever, who cares, because it perked up my day.

Oh, and here's one I consider a bit more likely. It helped that I changed that answer about attracting trust-fund Yalies.

You Are a Classic Beauty!

You have a timeless beauty that looks great in every decade Instead following trends, you stick to what works And this means you never skimp on your beauty routine Upside? Your classic looks tends to attract gentlemen - not boys.

What Type of Beauty Are You?

Reliable Source

From Jeffrey Hatcher's Scotland Road:

John: Where'd you get that? Another tabloid?
Halbrech: No, I heard it on the radio. Public radio.

You can probably do an NPR geek check at each performance, based on on the laugh that line gets. We were well represented tonight.

He is an Eng --- Peruvian?

There's this Gilbert and Sullivan lyric from Pinafore that has always amused the bejeebers out of me:

He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it's greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!

For he might have been a Roosian,
A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
Or perhaps Itali-an!

But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman!
He remains an Englishman!

I am rendered bejeeber-less by this song because it connects with something else that I have long been bemused by, which is people being proud of being American, which for most Americans is a total accident of birth.

I mean, I'm grateful to be an American, and glad to be an American, and I think I'm very, very lucky, but it seems a little silly to be proud of something over which I had no control. It's sort of like being proud of being bi-laterally symetrical. Or having O negative blood. I really had no input at all here.

So whenever I pass one of those "Proud to be an American!" (dammit) bumperstickers, I usually hum a few bars of the above nifty piece of 19th century sarcasm.

But the joke's on me because it turns out that the whole Englishman thing is, in fact, optional. If you get some other country to claim your pub in Penzance, like, say Peru, you can give up the whole Shakespeare-1066-Churchhill-blah-blah and be Peruvians instead of Cornishfolk. Why give up the whole Shakespeare, etc and become a wholly-owned portion of a medium-sized South American country? To avoid the smoking ban, of course.

Yep, the Peruvian Arms is offering itself up as a Peruvian consolate in order to be able to smoke on the premises. You've really got to admire that kind of ingenuity. And the fact that it's all going down in a locale made famous by Gilbert and Sullivan, well it's just too much happiness.

Had the Peruvians actually accepted the offer, I'd be ending this post with something like "those wacky Peruvians!" as a shout out to the nicotine-enabled Cornish but no such luck.

And, besides, as The Smokers' Club newsletter (I love Google) points out, Peru has had it own smoking ban since 1991.

phrase making

From Friday's Silver Spring, Singular:

Will even more Discovery employees be granted "eternity leave" by the company?

I really like "eternity leave" as a euphemism. It amuses me the same way that "dirt nap" did when I learned it. I may have to start collecting some of these in a list the way that I do good quotes.

Congratulations, McCall & Brian!

I knew the bride (when she used to rock and roll) -- Nick Lowe

Well, the bride looked a picture in the gown that her momma wore
When she was married herself nearly twenty-seven years before
They had to change the style a little but it looked just fine
Stayed up all night but they got it finished just in time

Now on the arm of her daddy she's walking down the aisle
And she catches my eye and she gives me a secret smile
Maybe its too old-fashioned but we were once close friends
But the way she looks today she never could have been

Well I can see her now in her tight blue jeans
Pumping all her money in the record machine
Spinning like a top, you shoulda seen her go
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll

Now a proud daddy only wanna give his little girl the best
So he put down a grand on a cosy little lovers nest
You could have called the reception an unqualified success
And a posh hotel for a hundred and fifty guests

Well I can see her now drinking with the boys
Breaking their hearts like they were toys
She used to love to party, she used to love to go
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll

Well I can see her now with her headphones on
Jumping up and down to her favourite song
She used to love to party, she used to wanna go
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll

Take a look at the bridegroom smiling pleased as pie
Shaking hands all round with a glassy look in his eye
He got a real good job and the shirt and tie is nice
But I remember a time when she would never even look at him twice

Well I can see her now drinking with the boys
Breaking their hearts like they were toys
She used to love to party, she used to love to go
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll
I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll

For Hjalti

"Bicycle Spring" by Kevin FitzPatrick, from Down on the Corner*
© Midwest Villages and Voices

Bicycle Spring

Windy, sunny, and Sunday,
the afternoon of your father's promise,
you will learn to ride your bike:

your father breathing hard
pushes, runs at your side,
one hand on the handlebars,
the other firm on the seat,

launching you like a glider
to soar long seconds
before wobbling to crash
in the soft green field

until you know how to ride
suddenly except for the brakes
and your father suddenly
is a speck waving way behind.

as you pedal toward strange sights
in blocks where he
has forbidden you to walk.


*I got this poem from The Writer's Almanac, the proofreading of which is not always quite what might be hoped. Mr. Keillor's peeps listed the poem as coming from the collection "Down on the Cornor" and you can see how many folks also lifted it from them by doing a Google search with the typo. I did the Google search after I noticed the typo which I would have ignored had I not previously noticed other typos in The Writer's Almanac. But then, I answer to a higher authority than they do. David finds all my typos.

Ring forth, ye bells

Those of you who keep up to date on my theater life are aware that I am between shows. Red vs. the Wolf closed on Sunday and I'm not rehearsing anything right now, nor likely to be soon. And you're probably wondering how I plan to fill that those horrible empty hours.

Well, I found a way. And it doesn't involve watching more pointless TV either. Or sitting on the sofa, which Pekoe regards as rather a pity.

My church has a hand bell choir which meets on Tuesdays and this week I attended for the first time. The other members of the group have actually been meeting for several weeks but when I told Danny, the church's music director, that I could already read music (and that I had rehearsals on Tuesdays) he gave me a pass until after Red was out of the way.

I love bells - big bells, small bells, great bells and little ones. I've never before touched a hand bell, let alone played one, but I sing and I had enough piano lessons during my wastrel youth that I can count to four unassisted. I can even - though not as well - count 1-uh-2-uh-3-uh-4-uh if we're using 8th notes.

As my friend Andi can tell you, far too many singers are lazy counters, depending instead on either what they hear from everyone around them or their own sense of "timing." Really and truly, this is what separates singers from musicians. I am a lazy counter (and thus a singer instead of a true vocal musician) because I don't count well in my head and usually mouth the numbers. But, hey, if one is playing a hand bell up in the balcony, out of sight of the congregation, mouthing the numbers is no big deal.

So the way that a hand bell choir works (for those of you not yet in the know) is sort of like playing a piano by assigning everyone just a few notes. We were working with pieces written in C (thank you, Lord!) and covering about three octaves, so for my very first time I only had to play the G and the A bell. Or rather, the G5 and A5, which are the G and A on the treble staff.

The technique is pretty easy: wearing cotton gloves, hold the bell so that it rests lightly on your chest, but on neither the clavicle nor the areas of the breast that are chock full of nerve endings. Count as though your very life depends on it and when it's time for your note, use a generally oval motion with a wrist-flick at the end of the oval to cause the clapper to strike the casting. At the end of the note, damp the bell against the non-clavical, non-breast home position. Just like it looks when you see other people do it.

Danny conducts and tells us the measure numbers as we go along, so if one might, like a sheep, go astray (a-a-a-a-a-a-ay), one can rejoin at the top of the next measure. Counting is to hand bells as breathing is to diving - not the most exciting part until you do it wrong.

Each of us has a copy of the music and because Danny is both efficient and nice (and because he is trying to delay the inevitable descent into madness that is inherit in being a church music director), he has circled the notes for each position: blue for left hand (for me, G5) and red for right hand (A5). So I only have to look ahead for the next occurance of red or blue and count until we reach it. I've spent enough time turning pages at Gilbert & Sullivan get togethers (sing-ins) and enough time singing choral music with wretched BPTs* that I know to look ahead and turn the page as soon as I can once we hit the middle measure of the last staff.

David and I saw Into Great Silence not long ago and I can amuse myself - if not necessarily others - by imitating a contemplative monk blowing with complete focused attention on the glue on a boot he's repairing, but those monks have pretty much exactly the right attitude for playing handbells. Count and ring. Dance if it's helpful, but focus, count, and ring. Be your notes.

My internal (yeah, okay, mouthed. Whatever.) monologue was 1 - left - 3 - left, or 1 - uh - 2 - right - left- right - 4 - uh. Which will fascinate folks at the next sing-in I attend when I practicing doing that with the solos I'm not singing. Hmmm. Maybe I should sit at the back.

We started with Amazing Grace, one of my favorite hymns, and it was delightful to hear order come from chaos as we went over it a few times and the actual tune surfaced. We also played another one (name escapes me) and "Shall We Gather at the River." I feel like a pilot who has made an actual plane go up in the actual sky and brought it back down again without actual lose of life. And the view is amazing up there.


*BPT = Bad Page Turn which is when one has a fairly immediate entrance with something complicated on the upper left hand side of the page. People who don't mark and pay attention to BPTs usually screw up entrances and say stuff like "oh, crap" a lot under their breath in rehearsal. They also get yelled at a lot. Don't be one of them.


The bells! — hear the bells!
The merry wedding bells!
The little silver bells!
How fairy-like a melody there swells
From the silver tinkling cells
Of the bells, bells, bells!
Of the bells!

The bells! — ah, the bells!
The heavy iron bells!
Hear the tolling of the bells!
Hear the knells!
How horrible a monody there floats
From their throats —
From their deep-toned throats!
How I shudder at the notes
From the melancholy throats
Of the bells, bells, bells —
Of the bells —

An early version of "The Bells" by E.A. Poe

The best bus ever!

If I lived in Lee County in Alabama, I would take this bus all the time. And right now I am considering changing my "About" text to read:

Take advantage of the Lee County Transit Agency’s (LETA) convenient bus schedule and routes. [...] It’s an easy, inexpensive and convenient way to travel. LETA is for anyone who needs transportation, wants to protect the environment, or wants to save money on gasoline costs. Whether you are traveling to work, to school, or to shopping areas across town, LETA will get you where you want to go!

Maybe this is what they meant in all those pop songs when they sang "you take me there," or "I'll take you there."

(Thanks to David.)

Job Description

Folks who ask you for a job description - what do you do? - come in two varieties: people who need to know for financial reasons, in which case the answer is that I support the CFO and the contracts department of a radar engineering firm; and people who want to know for social reasons, usually as small talk, in which case the answer is I work with very smart people who can take a joke. And give one in return, too.

For instance, one time I needed a list of Acronyms spelled out for a report. I sent the list to one of our senior engineers with the note "Could you please tell me what these acronyms stand for? Leta." His reply spelled out all of the acronyms along with the bonus:

Leta = Low Elevation Target Acquisition

I've been campaigning ever since that management name a project that and if it were up to them instead of the customer, they probably would.

Aging beautifully

All Things Considered ran a piece the other day on Tom DeBaggio, a nurseryman who has been living with Alzheimer's Disease for the past several years. I was listening in a sort of "oh, how sad" kind of way as I drove home but eventually the voice of Tom's wife, Joyce, caught my ear. She must have grown up around here because she sounds like so many of my friends. Which reminded me of something that I've been noticing lately, that is that none of us are getting any younger.

Yep, nothing gets past me.

(Warning: the following contains a Lifetime TV level of gushy content.)

My mother has advanced (and advancing) MS and a several good friends have relatives with Alzheimers and these are frightening and cruel things to happen to intelligent, productive, interesting, good people. Like most people, I am afraid of those cruel fates, but I've realized that I'm not afraid of getting older. At least not at the moment.

I've had a bit more free time lately and have spent as much of it as I could with my college friends and the extended social circle that we've built up. One of the things that I've always liked about this crowd is its ability and willingness to increase and include new people. The sole criterion seems to be a desire to be with us. (Or as I like to say about my Friday lunch group, "a willingness to endure what we consider to be interesting conversation.") So my "college friends" crowd include a lot of folks I never went to college with and some that I did, although we went in different decades. It also includes a lot of my friends' children who range from little babies to actual adults, so grandparenthood isn't too far in the future for some of us. (Or, rather, them.) I am, by the way, constantly impressed with the amazing level of niftiness of my friends' kids. And by what really great parents my friends are.

Brett for years claimed that there was no way that his little sister was [whatever her then current age was] and that she was only 16. Stacey was 16 for at least a decade. Brett allowed her to move up to 19 after she and John got married and he may even be admitting to over 21 now that Stace and John have children, but I'm not completely sure about that.

I don't go to great efforts to hide my age, especially as Mom's genes and neither smoking nor tanning means that I don't look my age, so why worry about it? But I don't advertise it either because I know enough age-ist directors that I'd rather lose a part to a better actress than to my birth certificate. For the record, I'm ..... I'm ..... well over 21. Very well, indeed, I guess.

But anyway, I'm noticing that we're getting older. Hair is graying or not, weight has been gained, or lost, or regained. Lines are showing up around our eyes. We're complaining less about our knees and more about our backs.

I thought that I'd be worried about this because our society doesn't exactly reward getting getting older but it doesn't bother me. Instead, I think it's really kind of cool to watch everyone as we pass through time. Yeah, in general we're aging pretty gracefully but I've realized that looking at Brett or Emily or Graymael or even Alice (well, not really Alice; she's only "19") and seeing gray hairs or crows' feet where none were when we all met gives us a kind of ownership in each others' lives.

Every time I look at my friends I don't just see now, I see the years that we've known each other getting to now. Some of us have lived longer than our parents. I'm older now than my mother was when she became a divorceé with two kids. We've raised and lost pets. I feel like Hume Cronyn looking at Jessica Tandy. And I'm reminded of one of Peter's best lines in The Pavilion when he tells Kari that he's missed getting to watch the little lines appear around her eyes because of the stupid way he treated her when they were young.

I am so lucky to have these people and so thankful that no matter how stupidly I've treated them now and again, I still get to be around - and they are still around - for me to see the lines coming out. I'm not sure if I'll have the same "life's rich pageant" attitude when we all start using walkers or require home health care, but I hope I do. We've joked for years about having wheelchair races at the Old Folks Home and I'm kind of looking forward to them.

Well we know where we're goin'
But we don't know where we've been
And we know what were knowin'
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

The Talking Heads

Why I go to church - in just 45 words

And why I wear pantyhose when I go:

God does not need me to pray five times a day. This is for my benefit. I am better if I pray like this. I am better if I wash before I pray, because I am clean. It is good for me, not for God.

Hamid - quoted on A*W*A*C

I found A*W*A*C - Afghanistan Without a Clue - though a Google alert for "Leta" (other returns usually include the Law Enforcement Thermographers Association and an eastern European new agency). Another Leta is a "long-time reader, comment poster, and supporter of the troops" and A*W*A*C, which is blogged by Capt. Doug Traversa (USAF) who is stationed in Kabul. Hamid is one of the translators attached to his group.

Getting to me where it hurts

I have tendinitis in my left shoulder which has been uncomfortable and inconvenient but hadn't really messed up my life until now. I mean, one can sleep only on one's right side and if I can't really lift my left arm well enough to completely shave under there, well I can't lift it well enough for anyone to see that, so it works out, right?

My wonderful pal John, the Grumpy Gecko, diagnosed the tendinitis for me. I can completely recommend having at least one friend who has banged, bruised, scraped, and cracked himself into walking reference material for injuries because I had no clue what was wrong with me and John told me after asking about three questions. And no co-pay, either. So after I got the informal diagnosis, I went in to see my GP and get the co-pay diagnosis. He agreed with John's assessment, suggested that I take Advil with every meal for a while, and wrote me a 'scrip for the 600 mg pills. (Drugstore Advil comes in 200 mg pills.) He also gave me a sheet of exercises to do and suggested a follow-up in 30 days.

30 days later .....

"So, Doctor, that Advil thing?"
"Yeah?"
"When's it supposed to work?"
"Your shoulder still hurts?"
"Yeah."

And I leave with a 'scrip for Vicodin, a referral for an MRI to check for soft tissue damage, and the following thought in my head: "Vicodin! Jeepers! That's what cranky Dr. House is addicted to! Agh!"

I fill the 'scrip and largely leave the pills in the medicine cabinet because they scare me. And because my mother used to counsel the opiate addicted and I remember exactly how much fun hanging around her office was. And because Mom says that my family has "addictive personalities." So it took me two weeks to fill the 'scrip and I've only taken three of the pills since.

The MRI showed no soft tissue damage and if I have "frozen shoulder" it can possibly work itself out over the course of the next 2 - 24 months (oh joy) without requiring a surgical intervention.

Things have gotten better. I can unhook my own bra without wanting to cry and if someone bumps into me I don't gasp, turn pale, and bite my lip for a minute. At least not as often.

So, basically, just another in my continuing adventures. Except that things have now taken a brutal turn. I was seeing a show the other day and at the end learned that it now hurts to applaud. And I see a lot of shows, so applauding is my most consistent exercise.

Fortunately, Brett has come to the rescue. Instead of pills or surgery or anything, he suggests that I simply cease applauding. And to cover, he suggests that instead of sitting up front and looking cheerful and engaged, I sit in the back and appear to be filled with ennui. Smoking clove cigarettes and wearing a lot of black - maybe even a beret - wouldn't hurt either, he says.

Fortunately, I know enough people who already act this way - which I had never before regarded as a good thing - that the learning curve should be no problem. Unfortunately, I doubt that I will completely master the scornful-yet-blasé comment or the openly rude one:

"I saw your show yesterday."
"Oh, how nice. I hope you enjoyed it."*
"Eh, it was children's theater."

Guess who's going to be getting a clove cigarette extinguished in his food sometime soon?

And, of course, I'm scheduled to see several friends shows in the next few weeks, but I hope that all those folks will remember that when I see their shows that even if I'm practically a goth college student on the outside, I'm smiling and applauding on the inside.


*"I hope you enjoyed it" doesn't actually require an answer, as it is a pleasantry, not an interrogative. Changing the subject works just fine if the truthful answer is "no, not really."

I'd put these on my car

The lovely Stacey called me the other day and left a message saying that she was stuck in traffic and that the car ahead of her had two bumper stickers that she knew I'd enjoy:

Will quote Shakespeare for food.

&

Theater is in my blood - which I have to sell to pay the rent.

She was so right because I smiled at them as I typed them out just now.

The 6:00 PM Poetry Club

Another reason that I love working here - our CEO just quoted my all time favorite poem. He and another staffer and I were discussing the other staffer's tendency to burst into poetry, so the Staffer quoted the most famous lines from The Walrus and the Carpenter and our CEO responded with Mr. Wither's masterpiece. We finished up with something else that has just escaped my memory, but it warmed my heart, none the less.

The Lover’s Resolution

George Wither (1588–1667)

SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
Or my cheeks make pale with care
’Cause another’s rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day
Or the flowery meads in May—
If she be not so to me
What care I how fair she be?

Shall my foolish heart be pined
’Cause I see a woman kind;
Or a well disposèd nature
Joinèd with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder, than
Turtle-dove or pelican,
If she be not so to me
What care I how kind she be?

Shall a woman’s virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her merits’ value known
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may gain her name of Best;
If she seem not such to me,
What care I how good she be?

’Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do
Who without them dare to woo;
And unless that mind I see,
What care I how great she be?

Great or good, or kind or fair,
I will ne’er the more despair;
If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go;
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?