OLD BLOG: Bitch-Day (abridged)

Thursday, November 12, 2009 

Bitch-Day is a wonderful tradition that started on my birthday about 7 or 8 years ago. My roommate and my girlfriend were away with the school choir on an all-day mini-tour. In the little time I did see them (after midnight before we went to bed, briefly before they left for the tour and after they got back that night), I called them bitches. I watched TV all day and called the people on TV bitches. It started with me being a little angry but ended up being a lot of fun.
So I decided that on my birthday it’s totally permissible to call people bitch for no reason and with no guilt or remorse or negative consequences. I have continued the tradition, but unfortunately this year’s celebration will be limited, as I am working at a private Baptist University (a little odd considering I’m not usually very private nor am I a Baptist). Too many people there would probably be horrified by my calling them bitch. But I encourage everyone out there to celebrate for me. And if you want to celebrate your own Bitch-Day on your birthday, well I certainly encourage that as well. Spread the joy.
Happy Bitch-Day, bitches!

OLD BLOG: New Hampshire Blog # 2: damn singers

7-17-09

I just want to share part of a conversation from rehearsal today (actually, yesterday). I'm the music director, and I gave a note to one of my cast—a note I'd given once before, and a note which I had my assistant music director give one day when I wasn't there. I told her don't do it like that, do it like this.
She said: But I want to do it like that, not this.
So I said: I understand. I'm telling you to do it this way.

I don't understand why that exchange was necessary. Does anyone else?

OLD BLOG: Beach Blog 6: shell collecting

Monday, January 05, 2009

I’ve been staying at the beach the past couple of months. While here, I’ve been walking on the beach, collecting shells from time to time, and making necklaces. So I’ve made a lot of observations about shells and collecting them. These are the kind of things that one might apply to life, if one is so inclined.

— You have to go where the shells are. (This might seem obvious, but if you’re applying these observations to getting a job or meeting someone special or whatever, you have to go where jobs or people or whatever are.)

— Watch out for SUVs. (I don’t know what that has to do with life or philosophy or whatever, but it’s true. Watch out for them.)

— Wear comfortable shoes (not real deep, but also true).

— If you look back and see only one set of footprints that means there was probably a high tide recently. You can be fairly sure others have been there before you. (If you want to think it has something to do with Jesus carrying you that’s fine, but I don’t really want to get into that.)

— If you’re really serious about collecting shells, bring along some container. You’ll need it.

— You can just walk around and wait for something to sort of jump out at you. But you won’t find a lot of shells that way. You have to actively look for them.

— There are lots of shells out there. You can never collect them all. And why would you want to? Eventually you have to decide what it is that you’re looking for.

— The really nice shells you notice at first may seem much less interesting after you’ve been looking for a while.

— Sometimes there’s very little out there, sometimes a lot. You have to go looking often to get to know when the good times and bad times are likely to be. (I still don’t know. I assume it has to do with the tides.)

— You’re more likely to notice the sort of shells you’re looking for, the kind you’re focused on, assuming those kinds of shells are out there. Just having a particular kind of shell in mind helps you notice it.

— When there is an overwhelming number of shells, it’s hard to see individuals. It may seem like a lot of worthless bits of shells, but if you really get down and search, you can find some great stuff. And when you bend down to pick something up, keep your eyes open. There are often things that you wouldn’t’ve noticed if you weren’t down there close.

— If you get too focused on shells, you can miss out on all the life out there: people walking by; birds in the surf or overhead; even the sun and the waves. Life is more important than collecting shells.

— Sometimes there’s yucky stuff out there among the shells. You don’t have to pick that stuff up. You can just move on and not deal with it. (I wouldn’t recommend this for dealing with major, real-life issues. But if you’re looking for something new in your life, you don’t have to take the bad stuff. Just move on and keep looking.)

— It can take a while for the tide and other processes to get rid of something dead.

— The more beautiful and colorful and unusual a shell, the more likely it is to easily break or already be broken, or to be too small to do much with.

— Sometimes a shell looks delicate but is much sturdier than you’d think, or vice versa. You can’t really tell unless you apply some pressure to it.

— If you don’t watch your step, you might accidentally crush something wonderful that you hadn’t noticed.

— You don’t really know what you have until you clean it up and look at it in a different light.

— Sometimes you’ll see couples out there, walking along together. If they’re looking for shells they probably won’t find a lot unless they are both committed to it, and they’re looking for the same things.

— The people you see out on the beach when it’s sunny are different from the people you see when it’s overcast.

— While size does matter, bigger isn’t necessarily better.

— Very few, if any, shells are just one color.

— Some of the most interesting shells to me might be thought ugly by others.

— I suspect there’s no such thing as a “perfect” shell: completely bilaterally symmetric or with no blemishes. But that’s okay. Sometimes beauty is found in the “imperfections”. 

OLD BLOG: Xmas (abridged)

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I used to find it irritating to see Christmas stuff this early. This year I was seeing stuff in mid-October. I wasn’t even thinking about Halloween yet in mid-October. I've been seeing Christmas commercials on television lately: basically Santa telling us to start buying stuff. I find the whole thing beyond irritating. It's offensive, even possibly immoral. I’m becoming less and less tolerant of commercialism in general, even before the current economic crisis.
There’s a documentary called What Would Jesus Buy? It follows this guy, Reverend Billy, and his choir on their cross country "crusade" to spread the "gospel" of not shopping. I don't think he is a real reverend but more of an activist. The way that we live, you can't really get along without buying some things. But we're not just addicted to oil in this country. We're addicted to buying stuff. Mostly stuff we don't need. There's nothing really good about buying stuff.
Why isn't someone saying, "Hey you don't have to keep buying so much crap!"? Why can't we just make corporations be more responsible: make things that aren't gonna break down and need to be replaced in a year when the warrantee expires? Make decent quality stuff we actually need, and a few nice special things for fun and whatever, but stop with all the crap. What have we as a people become, that we've let this happen? 

OLD BLOG: a fun little story (abridged)

September 05, 2008

Hey guys, here's a fun little story for you:
Some of you may be aware of my tendency to be naked. It's "liberating". (Okay, that's just rhetoric.) But I have come to be comfortable this way. AND it's economical, when the weather is warm enough. If you're not wearing any clothes during the summer, you don't have to run the air conditioning as high, thereby saving money and electricity, and thereby saving the earth. Plus, if you're not wearing clothes all day, you probably don't have to wash them quite as often. Maybe that's not a big difference, but when it comes to saving the earth, every little bit helps, right?
I am currently staying in a theatre’s actor housing. The summer season is over, and I've been the only person here the past week-and-a-half since the last show closed. I have my own bathroom and kitchenette in my room, but I've been keeping ice cream in one of the freezers downstairs in the big kitchen, 'cause the little freezer in my room just doesn't keep it ice creamy. And I go down there to get ice in the evenings, when I'm drinking to keep the voices quiet. (Just kidding—about the voices.)
I've been naked pretty much all summer here in my room. Well, last week I figured since nobody else was here and I'd only be down there for a minute or 2 at a time, I'd just go on down without putting anything on. No big deal, right? And over the weekend I did the same during the day 'cause, again, no one would see me.
This past Monday morning I decided to do a load of laundry, and I didn't put anything on. Since it was Labor Day, I figured the woman who comes in to clean wouldn't be here. Well, I was wrong. She was just sitting in front of the elevator where I happened to walk by. I stopped and apologized and said I didn't realize anyone was here and went and put on some pants. I apologized again when I went by with pants on. She didn't seem upset or traumatized. I think she must have thought everyone was gone too, because she seemed startled more than anything.
I guess I should make sure exactly when the next cast gets here. I mean, I don't have a problem with people seeing me naked. But I realize some people may have a problem with it. I just don't want to accidentally flash a whole cast full of strangers. That's not the best way to start off their experience at a new theatre, right?

OLD BLOG: NYC blog 13: (hey, that’s an unlucky number—interesting)

April 17, 2008 

My car was broken into sometime between Tuesday evening and this morning. I know a suitcase was stolen. It had a jacket in it, which was still there. It probably wasn't the right style. I'm not sure if there was anything else in it. And I don't know exactly what all is in my car, so I don't know for sure if anything else was taken. Some boxesand the glove compartmetn were dumped out into the seats and floor.
When I was living in Astoria I kept expecting my car to have been broken into or damaged or stolen while parked on the street, but it never happened. Then when I moved to Washington Heights—in not the cleanest neighborhood, by the way—I started thinking about that kind of thing again. I figured it was even more likely here, because I'm leaving a lot of stuff in my car (there's just no room where I'm subletting). And it's more of a stereotypical "urban New York City" neighborhood. But I haven't thought about it lately. I've also stopped wondering if I'm going to get mugged (in NYC, not specifically this neighborhood), so let's hope that doesn't happen.
It's not such a big deal that someone took a suitcase. I can get another suitcase—maybe one with wheels. Mainly it pisses me off that someone would be so rude. Did they have to dump stuff out of those little boxes? Can't they tell that it's a cheap car and whoever owns it isn't likely to have anything of value in it?
I don't have any real major racial hang-ups, and I don't want that to change. But this is a mostly Latino area. I knew a guy in college who was uncomfortable with black men, because he'd been attacked by one while he was working at a convenience store. (He also didn't like people coming up behind him—same reason.) I used to look at the groups of people hanging out on the streets around here with a sort of pleasant wistfulness—even with a sense of admiration and maybe jealousy. It would be nice to belong to a community and know everyone and say hi as you pass on the street. But now I'm pretty sure I'll look with suspicion and perhaps distain at the teens and young adults hanging around. I'm sure it wasn't the whole neighborhood that broke into my car. But the sad truth is that, I will now look around at the people here and wonder who it was. I'll feel differently about living here. I hate that. It's the saddest part about this.

OLD BLOG: NYC Blog 4: St. Paul’s Chapel (abridged)

November 12, 2007 

So I came here to see a concert. I did not know that this church was a sort of 9/11 memorial. It's an old colonial church near the World Trade Center site. It was used as a place to get food and rest for some of the rescue workers and since has been a memorial.
When I came inside, they were ending a service—probably a daily noon prayer-thing or whatever. Anyway, I was just sort of "hit" with this strong wave of emotion. It was quite surprising and uncomfortable. I felt sort of like I wanted to cry for no reason.
Well, there are reasons—all the anxiety lately, and then being unexpectedly confronted with a place resonating with intense emotion. I guess I need to cry.