Procrastinet

Obama's First Nat'l TV Spot

Title: "Country I Love."

Boy, is this a good political ad.

While we're genuflecting to the Obamessiah, I just got this from the papa of Charlie's BFF, Nate Dawg:

There are many things people do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American's duty to read this message and pass it along to all of their friends and loved ones.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag. He also ends every sentence by saying, 'WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.' Click here for video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.

A tape exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.

Every weekend, Barack and Michelle take their daughters HUNTING.

Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.

There's only one artist on Barack Obama's iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

Barack Obama says that Americans cling to GUNS and RELIGION because they are AWESOME.

Heh heh.

An Exercise in Positive Visualization

This could be called an exercise in positive visualization, or, less crunchily, wishful thinking. Either way, I whiled away an idle 15 minutes at the excellent poll-aggregating site 538 and thought about November's potential electoral map.

538 collects all state level polls and weights them against their own past accuracy and against some voodoo historical derivation, to assemble a proprietary "average" electoral probability for each candidate in each state.

Based on the speeches last Tuesday by the respective candidates (the John McCain Rictus-Against-Lime-Green travesty versus the Obamessiah treatment), I'm going to assume that John McCain is already doing as well as he's going to do. He has, for years, been ensconced in the lizard brain of collective America as "a decent, steady, independent guy" and no profane flipouts at his colleagues or 95% party line voting record are going to change that.

On the flip side, as we get to know him better in the unforgiving glare of a national presidential campaign, I doubt we're going to like him better.

Obama is less well known nationally and, in general, cuts a far better figure and makes a far better impression. So I'm assuming that, as this grinds on, more people are going to shift from McCain to Obama than the other direction.

So I did a prospective electoral map based on the assumption that Obama's numbers against McCain will improve 5% across the board between now and November. Meaning he would win any state where McCain currently enjoys a lead less than 5%. If that bore out, here's what the electoral map would look like:

Oh. Oh so pretty.

Then again, if the tide really and truly turns in O's direction and garnered him a country-wide 10% bounce (I think this is more farfetched though I won't rule it out), it would look like this:

Go Blue.

Grey Screen of Death

Okay, so I haven't updated the website in so long that it's gone blank temporarily. I know, I know. I'm working on it.

In the meantime, go here and look at 84 pictures of my kids. Click the "i" in the middle of the slideshow for my captions, which are awfully clever. Or charming. Or something. At least you'll know who you're looking at.

Some highlights:

Like a KNIFE in my HEART

Welcome to Super Tuesday. Let me tell you how mine started.

First, I woke up three and a half hours after I went to sleep (show opened last night - huzzah!) and staggered out into the kitchen, blinking and clutching my head (wine and cheese reception and only-ate-olives-for-dinner hangover - huzzah!)

And, barely awake, I stumbled into this dialogue:

Max: Mommy, are we voting today?

Mommy: Yes, buddy. Do you want to come with us?

Max: Yes. I want to vote.

Mommy: Okay. You can't vote yourself, but you can come with me.

Max: Okay. Do you know who you're voting for?

Mommy: Yes. We're voting for Obama.

Max: Daddy, you too?

Daddy: Yep.

Max: (Thinks) I'm voting for McCain.

Unbelievable. How do they find these ways to hurt you?

Of course I have a conniption like he's just unleashed a newly learned curse word. "WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT?!" I holler. "WHERE DID YOU EVEN HEAR THAT NAME?!"

Sigh.

In Your Facebook

I joined the Friendster bandwagon late, and after one weekend stopped paying any attention to it at all. Then when MySpace and FaceBook came around, I decided that there was finally an online somethingorother that I was too old and out of touch for, so I let them pass me by.

Then last night I decided to look somebody up, and suspected they'd be on FaceBook. To search it, you have to join. So I joined.

And I was magically transported into the middle of a big party where EVERYONE I'VE EVER KNOWN EVER was already having a high old time.

The thing is made of magic. It sent Friend requests to people I barely knew I knew. My best friend from High School, who I've annually googled in vain? There. My friend from Nerd Camp who I keep drifting in and out of touch with? There.

Amazingly - I didn't even go looking for these people! It scoured my gmail address book and automagically put me in touch with them.

Crazy. And addictive. Now we'll see if the addiction lasts longer than the 48 hours that Friendster got...

If you're on Facebook and somehow NOT one of the scores of people I already found, look me up. And if you're not on Facebook... let me go ahead and dangle the carrot in front of you. I didn't think I wanted it either.

My profile page.

Park Slope Hearts Netflix

Last Monday, I was taking our Netflix movie (Spirited Away, a new Top 10 Of All Time for me...) to the mailbox on Seventh Avenue.

As I approached, I saw that a fellow of my approximate demographic - thirtysomething, vaguely gruppy - was standing at the mailbox, staring at it. Clutched in his hand was a red Netflix envelope.

I stood behind him and waited my turn. He looked at me despairingly.

"It's full," he said.

"Ah," I said.

"It's full of Netflix." He shook his head and wandered off, still clutching his rumpled red envelope.

I pulled the mailbox open, and sure enough, its gaping blue maw was crammed with dozens of red envelopes. They were jammed at the back of the chute and it wouldn't open all the way.

Undaunted, I squeezed mine into a crack and chewed on it with the door a couple of times, then left it to its fate.

There were enough DVD's being returned to choke a mailbox. That, my friends, is a truly massive volume of Netflix.

Today I checked the Top 25 for 11215 - a list of movies that my zip code rents more frequently than average. I'm glad to see my nabe living up to its reputation - out of 25, there was a Godard, two Bunuels, a Bergman, an Antonioni, two Wong Kar Wais, a Truffaut and a Werner Herzog.

And, oddly, Videodrome.

NominObama? ObamaNation?

I called it way back when.

As soon as his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention was over, I said "I think that's our next President..."

My faith had wavered recently - during the chatterbox commentary on election night '06 his off-the-cuff stuff was underwhelming compared to his prepared speeches. He seemed a little green. And honestly, though I am a sometime political junkie, I haven't had the heart to get into the primary race.

But I've been seeing his poll surge lately, as the narrative cycle takes the inevitable turn from "HILLARY AND RUDY ARE SHOE-INS!" to "UH-OH NOW IT'S A RACE!"

And today, I think Hillary may have had her Dean Scream. During the Democratic Iowa Debates, when Obama was asked how he can represent a change when he has so many Clinton advisors, Hillary cackled over the beginning of his sober reply and interjected with "I want to hear that too" or something like that.

He looked up, smiled, and said "Well, Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well..."

Now, that's just a moderately good debate zinger, and the focus on debate zingers is a huge part of what's wrecking our political system. So shame on me for piling on.

But what got my attention wasn't the zinger - it was that, ten minutes after watching the clip, the skin on my back was still crawling from the sound of that laugh. It was piercingly obnoxious. It was an unguarded moment from a candidate who can not allow herself any.

And I think there's a very good chance that it will lose her the nomination.

Unless, of course, the Right Wing Noise Machine buries it. Because, of course, they are DESPERATE for a Hillary nomination. Their entire playbook for '08 is geared for Hillary. So it may not get the Dean Scream endless loop repeat.

But if it does, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the beginning of the end, and Obama takes.

Livingston Manor

I could probably file this under "The Weekly WANT-IT," since our trip last weekend sprung from my recent (okay, year-long) obsession with the idea of vacation property. Undaunted by our utter lack of funds or the hyper-inflated cost of real estate within three hours of NYC ($199k for a shack on one acre? Really?), Lisa and I have been nattering on happily about having "a place upstate," someday.

Of course, to her "someday" means "when it makes sense," and to me "someday" means "when I can find something even barely habitable on Craigslist for under $30k, preferably this weekend."

Last weekend, that quest took us to Livingston Manor, New York, to see a "500 sq. ft. 1BR cabin with sleep loft." This was, the ad said, situation on an in-town lot of "less than an acre," feautred a "rocking chair front porch," a lawn with an apple tree, and had been totally gut renovated by its architect owner who was for some reason totally unable to find a picture that looked more recent than 1977.

Still, it was a nice weekend for a drive, so we kidnapped our friend K8 and took off for Livingston Manor.

We found it easily and just started laughing. First of all, I commend the seller on his creative use of "less than an acre," given that the above picture shows the entirety of the property. So yes, it is less than an acre, in much the same way that my bathmat is less than an acre. And to come up with 500 sq. ft. I suspect he counted not only the 3' high loft and the unfinished basement, but possibly a couple of the walls.

Luckily, Livingston Manor itself has an adorable Main Street:

It also has an adorable sandwich/coffee shop called Peez Leweez, which also seemed to be the only game in town in the off season. We went in and found a sparsely populated, nicely decorated place with a menu of interesting sounding sandwiches. The back wall looked out on the Little Beaverkill Creek, which was beautiful:

And then I saw the sandwich of my dreams. Pot roast salad. Yes, pot roast salad. With pickles, mayo, and horseradish, on a pressed sourdough bread.

Oh my god I think I'm in love. The side is a crisp and fresh cucumber salad, and the "pink mayo" as Lisa called it turned out to be a tiny extra side treat of frozen ambrosia.

More pictures of our mini-roadtrip are available here.

Asking for it AGAIN

We took a week+ down in Charlotte with the folks, for a much needed decompression period. Max discovered to his delight that the front patio at my parents' house becomes strewn with toads around dusk. "This is TOAD LAND!" he shouted, chasing them with a flashlight. "How did there get to be SO MUCH TOAD in ONE LITTLE YARD?!"

Arrived back on Monday, and headed straight into production for ASKING FOR TROUBLE. Yesterday's tech rehearsal was somewhat impeded by my discovery, fifteen minutes before we were supposed to tech 11 short plays in 1/2 hour time slots each, that the lighting plot bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rep plot that was supposed to be in place, and that I would instead have to improvise a new plot, re-focus 3/4 of the lights and start tech an hour late.

Still, by 1/2way through we were back to only 10 minutes behind, and we got through it all. Graeme and I even made it home by 3:15am, which is not that bad for an Asking For Trouble tech.

The show runs tonight, tomorrow and Saturday, at 7pm (212-247-4982 x20 for reservations) and is only $10, which as Graeme pointed out comes to $0.91 per new play. Not too bad.

It also gave me an excuse to flex my photoshop skillz, resulting in the below. Enjoy.

Samuel Gompers

Dan and I scored a boys' night on Wednesday (thanks, girls), and ended up at his local bar/restaurant. It was, it turned out, Trivia Night. We had played trivia nights before, and done okay. And we were doing okay with this one, taking the lead with 12 points (2nd place had 11 and 3rd place had 9) at the break.

We had moved to the bar to hear better, but the sound system was terrible everywhere and the host was barely audible. When he began the recap, the guy sitting next to us started grumbling about the noise. He was a gigantic fellow with a pony tail who looked just like wrestling's Chris Jericho:

So the host is re-capping and this guy is grumbling, in one of those rock-grinder kind of voices. "What the hell is this guy talking about?" he's saying, to anyone who will listen. Finally, I leaned past Dan to explain what was going on. "Oh," says Chris Jericho, and lapses into a sullen silence.

Round Four starts, and it's a Potpourri round. The third question is "Who founded the American Federation of Labor, also known as the AFL?"

Dan and I, obviously, have no idea at all. Chris Jericho starts mumbling something. Dan says "what's that?"

And Chris Jericho leans over, puts one hand next to his mouth, and says "Samuel Gompers."

He was right. It was, in fact, Samuel Gompers. We flipped out.

So Chris Jericho (I don't *think* it was actually Chris Jericho, for the record) becomes an honorary member of Team Omar, and also correctly identifies the purchase price of Atlantic in Monopoly ($260, for those playing at home). Very nice, very bright guy, not into TV so no help in naming the members of the A-Team. Ah, well, everybody has their specialities. Apparently, Chris Jericho's is the early American labor movement.

Anyway, this is what happened, thanks to our oddball team of three:

SO proud.

I Has A Tornadoz

This morning Max pottered into the room at around 4 a.m. and tried to get me to get up and play with him. I was only half awake, and didn't notice that he was only half awake, which he proved by peeing half into the toilet and half on my toes. While I was likewise relieving myself (with, hopefully, better aim), he trudged into the living room and flopped on the couch. I went and lay down with him, and after a few minutes he decided the couch was too crowded and lay down on the floor instead. Fine by me. And we both knocked out cold again.

Around 5:45am I was awakened by a truly stupendous clap of thunder, which sounded like it was extremely nearby. You know how thunder in the distance is all rumbly and bass-heavy, whereas thunder up close is more like a crack? Yeah, like that. It sounded like God's front window just got a baseball through it. There were more to follow, strobing through the windows and shaking the panes with more thunder.

Huh, I thought, and went back to sleep. Max slept through it.

Turns out, there was either an actual tornado or at least "tornado-like winds" within a couple dozen blocks of us. Knocked over trees, ripped off some roofs, and dropped 3.5 inches of rain in a half hour, thereby flooding not only our basement (predictable, really) but the entire New York City subway system.

[photo ganked from Flickr user tmbg37]

Lisa, who left for work before I was even awake again, called to report that the F train was not running. I debated various ways to get to work, and eventually decided to walk. It's a five mile walk, but I've just been reading Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods so that seemed like nothing special.

I wasn't the only one with that idea:

I brought a change of clothes, which is good, because the heat was climbing towards 90 with 100% humidity, so I might as well have been taking a schvitz and my t-shirt was soon soaked through.

After an hour of walking, somewhere around the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, I started to feel the distance. Here's where I was headed, which looked very far away:

I made it in 80 minutes total, door-to-door (deducting 10 minutes for Max's drop off at daycare and requisite bagel stop at the Perch Cafe), which amounts to five 16-minute miles. With nothing to compare it against, I've decided that's not too shabby.

Not a bad way to break up the routine of the work week, all in all, but there's still something unsettling about a surprise dawn tornado-spewing thunderstorm cropping up over Brooklyn.

Uncle Mister Makes Good

Perennial P'net favorite Uncle Mister DeVore has gone from being a luminary in the world of print media to being a genuine on-the-airwaves Sirius Sattelite Radio personality, co-hosting a show called "DeVore and Diana" on the Maxim channel.

And now, the guy who made fun of me for starting a blog in early 2004 ("Wow," he said at the time, "you're SO 2002!"), has started a blog.

I was about to make fun of him, but then I clicked over and saw a picture of his co-host. To wit:

WTF?! I've known this guy since he was barfing into the gutter outside 13th Street Rep, for god's sake, and now he's got a NATIONAL RADIO SHOW with THIS GIRL?

Let's remember, Uncle Mister DeVore is this guy:

One of the manifest, myriad ways in which life is unfair...

Enter the Youngblog!

I seem to have burned myself out in a flurry of midterm election posts. Luckily, over at the brand newly minted "Youngblog," the member playwrights of Youngblood have been interviewing each other and posting the results. Four are posted already, with many more to come in the next few days.

Now you, too, can see what I have to put up with when I go to my non-day-job.

THE YOUNGBLOG

Pavement

For some reason, after a long ago "Weekly WANT IT" post about scooters/mopeds, I never talked about my scooter obsession on Procrastinet. Which is odd, because it was a pretty consuming thing for a long time. And I never did an official post documenting the purchase of my scooter, a terrific 1999 Kymco People 50 (nicknamed "Kimmery" or just The Scootch). I got her for under $800 last November (which, as anyone who has looked for a decent used scooter on Craigslist will know, is a screaming deal), and she has been rock-solid reliable ever since, except for when I let her sit for three months over the dead of winter and she needed some gas treatment to get going again.

Last week, riding across the Brooklyn Bridge on my morning commute, she passed 20,000 km - still starts at the first press of the starter button, still runs strong under all conditions (including violent thunderstorms). No less a luminary in the Brooklyn scooter scene than Nick at Brooklynbretta whistled in amazement over her dependability with such high miles, saying that's why he loves Kymco scooters.

More even than the satisfaction of fulfilling a WANT IT, I really love having a scooter. Last Friday, it was raining in the morning and I took the subway, and spent the whole time grumbling to myself about what a drag it was compared to the independence and efficiency of travel by scooter.

So Saturday morning, I'm zipping over to EST for Youngblood interviews - a trip that takes 35 minutes on the scootch, versus most of an hour on the subway - and I turned on 23rd Street to head over to 10th Avenue. I was at the head of traffic, in the left of the two Westbound lanes. There was a blue Subaru Tribeca in the right lane, slowing down and pulling off to the right - apparently parking.

Except he wasn't parking - he was pulling right to make a U-Turn. Which he proceeded to do, right into my path, about three car lengths ahead of me.

Unfortunately, I was on a thirty-foot patch of wet pavement at the time. So when I jumped on the brakes to avoid hitting this jackass, the bike went immediately into a skid.

Usually in the past when hairy stuff has gone down, time has slowed and I've remembered everything in equisite detail. Not so this time. I remember the car swinging in front of me, grabbing the brakes, hearing and feeling the skid, hearing a bang as my scooter hit the deck, and then I was lying on 23rd Street staring at the bottom of my bike as it lay (still running) a few feet away. I guess hitting the deck at 25-30 miles an hour precludes careful observation of the event.

The Subaru stopped long enough for me to glare at him disbelievingly from the pavement, and then sped away. A car service guy behind me in my lane (who praise Jesus saw me go down and stopped fifteen feet back) asked if I needed an ambulance, and assuming that the pain in my hands and legs would be a lot worse if I was seriously hurt, I said "no." I took a deep breath, got to my feet, got the bike upright and off the road, and sat for a long while trying not to throw up.

I was, I discovered, more or less all right - I tore my new jeans (DAMNIT) and the knees underneath, and bruised the bejeesus out of my right hip. The scooter was scratched and a turn signal was broken, but otherwise all was well. Since then I've got a limp from my badly bruised and skinned left knee, and putting my socks on is a huge drag since I'm not thrilled about bending my left leg, but it's all more annoying than distressing.

Mostly, I was immediately sad. Sad because I knew, even while I was still debating it with myself, that my days as a Scooter Commuter were over.

Anyone who rides a motorcycle will tell you that you're going to go down at some point. That it's "the price of the ride." And honestly, if God came down and said "You can keep riding the scooter, but once a year some assclown is going to do something stupid and you're going to hit the deck and bang yourself up like that," I think I'd take that deal. Whatever. It's some bruises and a torn up knee.

But I don't have a deal like that. And next time, the car service guy might be closer behind me, and the idea of Max growing up with no Dad because Dad decided he just HAD to ride a scooter in Manhattan makes me sick, regardless of how long the odds actually are against it.

Which, as I've said, PISSES ME OFF because I really, really like riding that damn thing.

God damnit.

Quotes from Vacation

We're down with my folks in NC for a week. A few quotes at random:

Me: Hey, hysterical monkey!

Max: Yes, Daddy?

And, while floating in the lake, holding Max and barely supported by pool noodles (as Lisa says, maybe it's time to lay off the Ho-Hos):

Me: I can't do that right now, buddy, I have to concentrate on keeping us afloGLUBBLEBARGLE!

I've also developed a new hobby/obsession: reverse macro photography. I had read about it for a while now but didn't have a spare lens sitting around, until I found my dad's old 55mm 2.8f lens sitting in their crawlspace. When you hold one lens backwards against the camera's lens, it makes for an extreme close-up lens with razor-thin depth of focus (and, in this case, wicked vignetting).

So all week I've been transporting things to my parents' black cooktop to take closeups. My favorite series so far is the Pooh figures:

I also took pictures of my old Matchbox cars, and a set of Russian nesting dolls.

Strange Quotes

This morning, 8:20am:

Max (to Daddy): DON'T puke on my head. Only get me chicken nuggets.

Submitted without comment.

I've Got the Sturm, Now Where's My God Damned Drang?!

So last Friday, I was trying to get out of the office early. We were going upstate to the Youngblood retreat, and I had to get back to Brooklyn, pick up the 15-passenger van I'd rented from an orthodox Jewish fellow way out MacDonald Avenue, go to Costco to pick up the snacks and volumes of beer and whiskey that Youngblood requires for a proper artistic retreat, and get back to EST on W. 52nd Street by 7pm to pick up the playwrights and head upstate.

To that end, I worked through lunch so that I could cut out at 4:30. I rode my scooter, which is the fastest way home - I can usually make it in about 20 minutes door-to-door.

So as I'm sitting at my desk, I see that the sky outside, especially to the west over New Jersey, has gotten ominously bruise-like. I checked my email and sure enough I had a My-Cast weather alert for a SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING.

Now, usually these warnings are of the "OH, HEY, THERE'S A STORM BY YOU; HOW ABOUT TAKING AN UMBRELLA" variety. Not this one, though. This one was of the hysterical, chicken little variety. It went something like this.

ZOMFG! DANGEROUS STORM IS RIGHT OVER YOU! LIGHTING'S GONNA KILL YOU! WINDS ARE GOING TO KNOCK YOU DOWN! HIDE INSIDE OR YOU GONNA DIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

I may be paraphrasing a bit. But that was the basic tone. It was so overwrought that I even joked about it to the buxom, bovine secretary next to me, who doesn't seem to understand anything I say.

So I'm watching on the radar as the little blisters of blood-red severe storm bubble up over eastern New Jersey and blow straight towards the little X's on the map, one saying "Work" and the other saying "Home."

Maybe I can cut out early, thinks I. Not so fast, thinks my boss, here's a document for you to chew on, how do you like THEM apples.

So at 4:31pm I'm frantically shutting down my computer, grabbing my helmet, and dashing outside to see how it's looking.

"NUMBER ONE KILLER IN A STORM IS CLOUD-TO-GROUND LIGHTNING," goes the weather report, replaying in my head. "EXPECT CONTINUOUS CLOUD-TO-GROUND LIGHTNING IN THIS WEATHER SYSTEM."

But when I get outside, the thunder is still west of me, and the rain is light.

And I think: I don't have time to wait or take the train. I'm gonna go for it.

So I sprint to my scooter, fire it up and buzz off into the rain.

By the time I get moving, the rain is no longer light. The rain is what one would comfortably call "heavy."

By the time I get three blocks towards the Brooklyn Bridge, the rain is no longer heavy. The rain is what one would comfortably call "torrential."

"This is a bad idea," I'm beginning to think. "I should turn around," I think. "That's going to lose me a lot of time, though," I think, as I pull up to the on-ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge, "because I'll have to drive back to the motorcycle parking lot on Wall Street, THEN walk all the way up to the train (sopping wet) THEN take the train home. But I really should do it anyway, it's really raining hard right now, this probably isn't so safe."

The problem being this: in the time it took me to process all of those thoughts, I had pulled onto the on-ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge. I didn't consciously decide to do so - I actually had decided to turn around. To this day I'm not exactly sure what happened.

So now I'm driving a 50cc scooter through solid rain and about 4 inches of runoff up a ramp and onto the Brooklyn Bridge. And the lightning has arrived.

It hadn't occurred to me how seldom one is actually "out in" a big thunderstorm. It's very rare, nowadays, to be caught totally exposed in a really big storm - unless you're like a wheat farmer in Kansas or something. Suffice it to say, my Eastern Seaboard urban mindset wasn't really prepared to absorb such a thing.

So I'm buzzing steadily up the ramp onto the Bridge. I'm soaked through and my glasses are obscured, there are cars on all sides of me, the 60mph wind gusts that I was promised by the National Weather Service have started to arrive, and the lightning has really started gearing up.

Somewhere around the first big stone tower of the bridge, I looked ahead and saw a gust of wind blowing a solid white sheet of rain absolutely horizontally across the road, and the lightning starting hitting so close there was almost no delay between the flash and the splintering crack of thunder.

And I just want to point out: when you think about lighting and thunder, you think of it as something periodic, right? Sporadic, even? Nuh-uh. Not in the middle of this little number. The strikes came with metronomic regularity, spaced about one, maybe two seconds apart. And there I was, way up hundreds of yards above the East River, on a 20' wide stretch of concrete surrounded by A GIGANTIC STRUCTURE OF METAL.

It was about then that I began speaking, out loud, to God. I'm not sure what all I promised Him in exchange if he just got me down the other side of that bridge unfried, but I think it was pretty extensive.

Whatever it is, I clearly owe it to Him now, because here I am, safe and dry. My little scootch, a valiant Kymco People 50 which I had never even ridden through a moderate drizzle before, never wavered - even while driving through 60mph side winds and up to 6" of runoff and puddle.

And by sometime the next day, I had even stopped shaking.

Birthday Party - Complete With Potential Maiming!

Pictures are online from Max's 3rd Birthday Party on Saturday - see them all here!

We had a great time - a big thank you to everyone who came. It was what we call in the business an "intimate gathering," which was probably for the best as the weather kept us indoors and even with only 20ish people the basement got fairly tropical - which was nicely in keeping, come to think of it, with the Accidental Tiki theme. ("Accidental" because we didn't go with Tiki out of a burning desire to rock the Tiki party, but because Max was obsessed with totem poles - courtesy of Little Einsteins - and Tiki was as close as we could get, decor-wise).

There was some gratuitous drama, unfortunately: As the main wave of guests had left, and the party prepared to transition back downstairs with the stragglers, Max decided to be a big boy and walk down the flight of stairs himself - which he often does, but more often asks to be carried. I was at the top of the stairs, a step or two behind him.

One of his presents, an oversized, collapsible frisbee ring, had fallen from the railing above the stairs onto the third step. I saw Max try to step around and/or over it, and something told me it wasn't going to go well. But I was a foot too far away and a second too slow.

I think his foot came down on the edge of it that stuck out beyond the stair, so of course it slid out from under him. He lost his balance, and instead of going safely backwards onto his butt he went forward onto his knees, and then pitched headfirst straight down the stairs.

Actually, at first he wasn't going straight - he was angling to the left, which would have put him off the side of the stairs for the six foot fall to our carpeted concrete basement floor. This was when I began choking on my own heart, which had found its way into my throat.

He straightened out, thank God, but still went headfirst down three steps - and then, for added drama, went into full end-over-end Slinky mode, with his feet pitching up over his head and flipping him entirely over. With another half turn he was crumpled on the landing.

I got to him about .2 seconds later, and could see that he was (a) moving and (b) crying, in that awful silent way they do when they're really hurt and/or really scared. As all limbs seemed at first glance to be functioning, I scooped him up into my arms and held him and soothed him (and Lisa, who had levitated down to the landing more or less instantly from the upstairs sofa), and waited for the crying to subside enough that we could see if there was anything serious wrong.

As it turned out, there wasn't. Not a thing. After about four minutes of sobbing and asking repeatedly "why did I fall? Why I went boom? Why I went head over heels? Why I took a tumble?" he was trotting around and playing, happy as a clam.

I was fairly calm at the time - I've been vaguely afraid of him falling down the stairs for a long while, and when it happened part of my brain just went "okay, so this is actually happening. Now we just have to see how bad it is." Plus we still had guests, and I was trying to reassure both Lisa and them that everything was all right.

Saturday night, nine or so hours later, I lay down to go to bed. And suddenly I was freaking out entirely - heart pounding, nauseous, etc. Lisa got me back onto the topic of how stupid "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" was, and eventually I calmed down. By morning I felt fine - it was just strange to see how the anxiety bill came due a few hours later, even though it was dodged at the time.

Anyway - he's totally fine. And he had a fantastic day. It was just a little more dramatic than it maybe needed to be.

And when we're at the top or bottom of the stairs now and he makes his usual request of "carry me!", I'm more than happy to oblige.

TRUE LIFE

I am belated, as usual, on the promotion front, but here goes:

This past Sunday, Youngblood's latest show, THE TRUE LIFE STORY OF [YOUR NAME HERE]: TOM RITCHFORD, was the subject of a feature in the NY Times Arts & Leisure section. The reporter, Steven McElroy, had shadowed us from the very beginning of the project.

For this show, created for the Brick Theater's $ELLOUT FESTIVAL, we held an eBay auction, to write the "TRUE LIFE STORY" of the winning bidder. Eight of the Youngblood playwrights eventually contributed material, which I organized into a 50-minute show. The article references our "kamikaze timetable," and that was no joke this time out - this show opened nine days after "Not All Korean Girls," and we didn't have a full cast until 6 days before opening. Sigh.

Despite a truly unsettling tech on the day before we opened (one of those soul-shaking moments where you're briefly convinced that everything you've done is bad, misguided, and destined to flagrant failure), the show came together in excellent style. It was one of the great turnarounds I've ever been a part of.

Since then we've had some contentious run-ins with our subject, which is too bad. Some day it may be worth chronicling the whole saga - for now I'm eager to get past it. There was some drama, but nothing that rose above the level of mutually snippy emails.

Anyway, here are some excerpts from the article:

YOUNGBLOOD, a collective of playwrights under 30, recently devised a novel way to raise money. The team held an auction on eBay offering to write a play about the winning bidder and stage it at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

As it turned out, the auction was just the first of many wrinkles in the production, which opened this month and runs through July 1. The variables included eight writers working separately, an unknown subject, a cast of seven unpaid actors and a down-to-the wire schedule. While many Off Off Broadway troupes take less than two months from first rehearsal to opening night, as Youngblood did, most of them usually start with a script. Steven McElroy chronicled the life of "The True Life Story of [Your Name Here]."

46 DAYS TO GO
Tom Ritchford, 43, a software engineer for Google, enters the auction, partly as a lark and partly as a way to tell the story of his parents, who both died of AIDS. He wins with a bid of $521, though he said he was willing to pay twice that. The show will now be known as "The True Life Story of [Your Name Here]: Tom Ritchford."

38 DAYS TO GO
The playwrights, led by R. J. Tolan and Graeme Gillis, the collective's artistic directors, wait in a Midtown bar to meet the auction winner. Their main concern is a boring subject. Mr. Ritchford bustles in late. He is energetic, nervous, speaks quickly with a British accent and flashes a big grin. Mr. Gillis turns to another writer: "We're golden." Mr. Ritchford talks about himself for over an hour. He says little about his parents and much about his relationships with younger women.

[SNIP]

8 DAYS TO GO
The cast is short one actor, the script consists of eight scenes that aren't finished, and the artistic directors are still struggling to link them. Rehearsals start anyway.

7 DAYS TO GO
An actor who was to play Mr. Ritchford in several scenes leaves for paying work. Now the cast is down two actors, but Mr. Tolan is not upset: Youngblood knows others accustomed to its "kamikaze timetable."

6 DAYS TO GO
The final two actors are cast.

[SNIP]

THE DAY BEFORE
The tech rehearsal is rough and lasts until midnight. Afterward, Mr. Gillis and Mr. Tolan (the director as well as the set, costume, sound and lighting designer) work three more hours, trimming the script and adjusting props and costumes.

If you're registered with the Times, you can read the rest here.

As I said, it was a happy ending, with a big friendly house and the show in pretty darn good shape. Since then it has come together further, with last Saturday's show being our best yet. All in all, with some heavy ups and downs, I think we've put together a pretty compelling hour of theater.

Three more shows if you want to check it out - Friday 6/23 at 10:15pm, Wednesday 6/28 at 9:30pm, and Saturday 7/1 at 2pm. Tickets are available on TheaterMania.

Goodbye, Terrible Twos

Today is officially Max's last day as a 2-year-old. Sure enough, like clockwork, last Friday he suddenly decreased the amount of his day he spends being a pain in the ass from about 40% to about 8%. Not bad, kid, not bad.

In his honor, I began composing a song this morning. But I've gotten hung up partway through and I'm not entirely satisfied with the results. Maybe some of you can chime in...

(To the tune of Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"):

Goodbye, Terrible Twos
When your attitude was a beaut
Sometimes you were kind of a butthead
But also incredibly cute

Oh Goodbye, Terrible Twos
As a new part of childhood arrives
We made you give up your binkies
And incredibly, you survived

So Goodbye, Terrible Twos
When you learned how to get what you want
Oh...
I hope we can find where less screaming lies
Beyond the terrible two-ooo-ooos
Two-oo-oo-ooo-oooos...

More verses? Anybody? Perj, I'm looking at you...

5th Avenue Street Fair

Pictures are up on Flickr from our visit to the Fifth Avenue Street Fair. It's our favorite neighborhood event of the year, thanks to the excellent food booths from the restaurants at the far end of 5th - specifically, Stone Park and Blue Ribbon. Even though this one happened during the busiest part of my insanely busy last few weeks, we managed to catch an early lunch before I jetted off to rehearsal.

Lisa has some pictures - which I'll post when I get a chance - of Max in the bouncy room after I left, where he was overwhelmed by bigger kids to his utter delight. Despite having been soundly knocked around, it stands as a highlight of his young life, which he talks about even now weeks later. "Why I have to get out after five minutes?" he'll say, out of nowhere, mournfully. "WHY was it somebody else's turn?"

(Click on where it says "5th Avenue Street Fair" below the thumbnails to see the photoset)

www.flickr.com procrastinet's 5th Avenue Street Fair photoset

Starting to Crack

So I got home from tech last night at 3am. And got up at 7:30 to start working on it again.

In the midst of the stress and fatigue, I've developed strange irrelevant fixations. As my satchel gets overstuffed with all the things I'm carrying - computer, iPod, CD-Rs, camera, script binder, props, etc. - I think wistfully of the new Brooklyn Industries bag I'm going to buy as soon as I have an hour free. Somehow I've become convinced that, once I buy that bag and transfer all the wires, adapters, pens, headphones, plugs and assorted electronic crap that are currently unhappily cohabiting the one outside pocket of my current bag, my LIFE WILL BE BETTER AND MORE IN CONTROL.

Sigh.

So I've been checking out other dudes' bags on the subway. (Boy does that sound wrong). Today, in rapid succession, I saw two guys with bags so small they couldn't even carry a 3-ring binder. And as the second guy delved into his sleek but petite YakSak my fatigue drifted towards Tourette's and I very nearly shouted "MANPURSE!" at him at the top of my lungs.

In other news, I may finally have broken myself of my decades-long habit of trying to do everything myself when I put a show together.

Not All Korean Girls Can Fly

So this is the first thing that has been keeping me so thoroughly occupied this month that I have allowed my poor website to wither on the vine - a show for the EST Marathon of One-Acts:

The show is by Youngblood alum extraordinaire Lloyd Suh and it's a wild, funny, disturbing little piece - and the cast is terrific. The evening also has one acts by (fellow Youngblood alum) Amy Fox, David Ives and anton dudley. It's a good time all around - come check it out if you can.

If you happen to be free tonight, tomorrow, Friday or Saturday - drop me a line, we're papering the house for the first couple days.

Next up: THE TRUE LIFE STORY OF [YOUR NAME HERE]: TOM RITCHFORD in the Brick's $ELLOUT FESTIVAL. Opening next Friday, June 2. Stay tuned!

(Illustration above by the inimitable Jeanie Lee)

UPDATE:

God bless New York Magazine, for making me feel like I exist:

That's right, both of those headlines have something to do with me. (Okay, more accurately "I have something to do with both of those headlines," but that's so much less... dynamic...)

While Not All Korean Girls... wasn't one of their three picks in the Marathon (being beat out by some hacks named Eno, Mamet and Guirgis - WHATEVS), TRUE LIFE STORY is indeed one of their picks from the $ELLOUT FESTIVAL.

I guess that means I should start rehearsing, huh?

The 80s Are Back - and So Am I!

This morning on the subway, within seconds of each other, I saw two unmistakable signs that the 80s are, from a fashion standpoint, rising from the dead like a heinous dayglo zombie.

Evidence One: A chick in a miniskirt with leggings. Yes, leggings. Eeesh. At least I had seen/read/heard that "leggings are BACK." So I was somewhat braced for it. Unlike...

Evidence Two: A chick with BIG SUPER-WIDE DAYGLO ORANGE SHOELACES.

Just like the kind I used to tie through my ID card at nerd camp to hang it around my neck before I realized that only the Nerds of nerd camp actually wore their cards around their necks like they're supposed to. This was about the time I learned that knee socks didn't need to be worn pulled all the way up, nor was it a good fashion idea, if your socks were worn out and sagging, to scotch tape them to your legs.

In other words: the 80s.

Some People Like Goats

As Twin C continues to suffer from withdrawal - and the Polenblog remains dark - he has resolved to "fill Procrastinet with as much Polenblogian nonsense as possible." To that end, he sends the link to:

Goat Sounds.

What's really striking about the page is how much these people care. About goat sounds. And goats, in general. Some quotes:

Goats make an interesting variety of sounds. You might think we are crazy, but sometimes we can tell what a goat means by its bleat.

[snip]

A buck interested in a doe will make a distinctive call that we've name "blubbing." There probably is a technical term.

[snip]

Sheep really sound much different than goats. We don't like when people confuse goats for sheep.

I love the internet.

Thanks, C

Sure Shot

I am a sucker for carnival games.

Particularly, I am a sucker for Whack-a-Mole, and the machine gun game where you get 100 lead pellets and shoot out the red star on the little piece of paper.

Every time we go to Coney Island, I have to drop at least $2 for one play on the machine guns. In the heady days of my youth, I would play over and over. But as everyone knows, it's almost friggin' impossible to win the thing - because (a) the guns are woefully inaccurate and (b) you have to get rid of ALL of the red star. A couple times in the past I've gotten the center of the card well blown out, only to find one little hanging chad with the tip of a star point on it.

Yesterday, as our trip to Coney was wrapping up, I stopped for my usual, futile try at the machine guns. The guy poured my tube of shot into the gun and slid a fresh target out on the string. I lined up and started firing.

Now, the key here is short, controlled bursts. It's still a mug's game, since usually where you point the gun has only a tangential relationship to where the pellets go. But in theory you go around the star in a circle with short, controlled bursts.

As I fired away, I noticed a very, very strange thing. Something I had never experienced before, in eight years' worth of attempts at the machine guns.

The pellets were going where I aimed them.

I don't know if it was just early enough in the season that the guns haven't been fully crapified yet, or if I got the only accurate carny-booth M-16 in God's creation, or if it was an Easter Miracle, or what, but the confounded gun was totally accurate.

So I marched my bursts around in a circle. The spacing was good, the circle was clean, but I was about 1/2way through my pellets (we experienced machine gunners have a feel for such things) and the bursts weren't connecting. "Ah well," I thought, "it's been fun anyway."

And then, with the circle mostly complete, I went back to the spots that were obviously still intact. And promptly blew the whole center of the target clean out.

My heart jumped, but I could see there was still a chad with the lower right point of the star hanging on. And I knew I had used most of my pellets.

One burst at the remaining tag. Missed. Another burst. Missed. Another. Missed. With each squeeze of the trigger I was hurrying towards that crushing moment when the gun wheezes empty.

I took a deep breath and blew it out, steeling myself for both a steady shot and the near-inevitable disappointment of getting SO CLOSE.

And shot the hanging chad clean off. And promptly ran out of pellets.

The young guy watching the booth while his boss had gone for change pulled up the target. And looked at it. And looked at it. And finally, whistled a bit.

"Looks good, right?" I said. These guys are masters of finding one last teeny little bit of red to disqualify you with.

"Phew," he said. "Looks real good. I gotta wait for my boss."

The boss came back, a big greasy fella sporting a woman's tank top. He checked the card.

He checked the card again. And again.

And finally, even he had to admit that I'd won.

I had to sign and date my card (because a booth that gives away big cheap stuffed animals is such a high security zone) and it went up on the hook.

The kid got down my chosen Big Bootleg Safari Pooh Bear.

And I got to live the lifelong dream of being the guy walking around with the biggest stuffed animal they have.

And I discovered something gratifying but also a little sad: when you're the guy walking around with the biggest stuffed animal they have, people look at you different. Girls look at you with admiration. Guys look at you with envy. Everybody looks at you like you're big.

And speaking of big, now Max is the proud owner of a Pooh Bear way bigger than he is.

Which is, of course, just perfect for apartment life. Even victory comes with a downside.

Happy Easter!

Youngblood $ELLS OUT

For their third annual summer theater festival, the Brick Theater has chosen a new theme:

THE $ELLOUT FESTIVAL

Never ones to be left behind when the hybridization of art and crass commercialism is afoot, Youngblood has entered the fray with a project called THE TRUE LIFE STORY OF [your name here].

Here's what the Steven McElroy of the NY Times had to say about it:

The Bidding Soon Opens On Your Life Story Onstage

All those people who have always thought their lives more scintillating than that of the average Joe or Jane can now bid on the chance to have it recreated onstage. A collective of emerging playwrights known as Youngblood and working under the aegis of the Ensemble Studio Theater will happily do the writing. Starting today, bidding begins on eBay for "True Life Story of [Your Name Here]," a play yet to be written. The winning bidder will meet with a Youngblood team, have their story adapted to the stage and be exposed in front of audiences at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as part of the $ellout Festival, beginning June 2. This will not be a play about a procrastinator, though: the auction ends in 10 days.

On only the second day of the auction, the bidding has already gone from $100 to $177.50!

Auction link is here.

WTF?!

I walked Max to preschool this morning, and came inside at 9:45am. Grey day, chilly, but otherwise unextraordinary.

At 11am I looked out the window to see this:

Happy April, everybody!

(The thing that really makes me cranky is that I know, for miles around, there are meatheads going "I don't wanna hear NO MORE about this global warming now...")

What the...?

Engadget has an article about Intel's release of a community-friendly PC in rural India, with an accompanying press picture:

Engadget talks about how big the thing is. Which, yeah, that's a big computer. But on a second glance, there's some really strange stuff going on in this picture.

First, let's look talk about the zomboid, joyless faces of the young Indian girls who are staring at the thing as if it's sapping their will to live:

I would have thought the point of the press release would be that Intel was sending cheap rugged computers to rural India and that rural Indians were HAPPY about it. Clearly not.

What's really freaking me out, though, is the painting on the wall behind them. I mean, yeah, the shrine to Ganesh on the right - fine. No worries. India, and all that. But what the HECK is going on in that painting?

Let's break it down.

This dude:

is getting zapped by this orb:

I'm actually fine, so far. So whatever, this guy is all in raptures because a big sun-like orb with a book in it is beaming him with happy rays. Fine. Dope. I support that.

But then look what happens when the Orb of Wisdom beams goodness on the guy: five creepy GHOSTS come jumping out of him!

Here's CREEPY HEART GHOST:

Here's CREEPY RAIN GHOST:

Here's CREEPY BAMBOO FOREST GHOST:

Here's CREEPY MONEY GHOST:

And, my personal favorite, CREEPY I'VE-GROWN-SO-MANY-APPLES-IT'S-GIVEN-ME-A-WICKED-HEADACHE GHOST:

You'd think getting hit with goodness by an orb with a book in it and having weird toothy-faced symbologic ghosts shoot out of you in all directions would freak a fella out, but no. Look at the picture again. Dude's just chillin.

Just when I've started to make my peace with it, when I'm all "Well, if it doesn't bother the dude and the orb and the ghosts then why should it bother me," I spot these creepy eyes peering out from the clouds to the left of the orb:

What the HECK is going on with this thing? This is some ANNUIT COEPTIS-level weirdness going down.

Thanks, Intel. Thanks for freaking out my whole morning.

Ghost Ship!

I was randomly perusing Google Maps today, and discovered a very odd thing.

Up at the 50th Street Cruise Ship Docks, sure enough, there's a big cruise ship berthed. Makes sense, right? Here she is:

But then you zoom up closer, and look at this action:

What's going on here? Is Google Maps doctoring their images? Did the Andrea Doria berth at the West Side Docks?

Curbed Appeal

HGTV's Curb Appeal got itself a new host last night - our very own, dearly beloved Dan.

Way to go, Captain. You done good.

Yoiks and AWAY!

And now for some pre-emptive photoblogging:

Tomorrow we leave for four days in Costa Rica, for my cousin's wedding. The wedding will look something like this, though this is not their wedding. Obviously. If it was their wedding, we'd have missed it and would be going to Costa Rica for no reason (not that that's a bad idea anyway):

Here is the Costa Rican flag:

Here is Costa Rica:

We'll be staying in the middle for two nights, and then on the left for two nights.

Here's one of the famous sites in Costa Rica, Arenal Volcano, to which we will not be going because it's too far away from where we're staying:

And, last but not least, here's a picture of the camera I'm going to use to take pictures of the actual wedding we're going for and the things we actually see while we're there:

...which my lovely wife got me for my birthday. (Or rather: approved the purchase of. For my birthday. Which is still two months away. But we're going to Costa Rica now, and it didn't make sense to go to Costa Rica and THEN get a nice new camera).

I had such a fast and furious WANT IT about the camera that I didn't even get to write a Weekly Want-It entry about it. Suffice it to say, I was using the Digital Photography Review link an awful lot the last few days. I almost got a Canon Digital Rebel XT, but the hand grip is too small and it hurts to hold for more than a minute at a time. Then I almost broke down and sprung for a Canon 20D because it's big and fancy and would have made me feel big and fancy. Then I found out Nikon offered the D50 with a regular lens AND a big zoom lens for the same price as the XT and way less than the 20D. So I bought it.

Our flight out tomorrow leaves at 5:15am. Which means if we're going to take the usual "two hours in advance" advice for international flights, we have to leave our house at about 2:30am this morning. With a toddler. For a two hour wait at the airport and a five and a half hour flight. Wish us luck!

Awesomeness

From Friend of P'net Bobby L comes this absolutely geektastic offering:

More parody motivational posters at Ishkur.com, where the creator authorizes anyone and everyone to "meme these things around the internet like a motherfucking religious cult." I'm in!

Other good ones: Nostalgia, Poker and, most painfully, Internet.

Total Faith in Cosmic AAAUUGH!

[[Warning: poetic license ahead.]]

Jumpin' Jehosaphat, I have to open four different shows in the next five days. Three of which have never rehearsed. And cook breakfast for 100 people. And design a show. And wage a pitched battle against six other Off-Off theater companies.

[[End poetic license.]]

Okay, so that's counting both 20-minute shows in the Youngblood Sunday Brunch as a "show." And I won't actually be personally cooking the whole breakfast, and we probably won't actually have 100 people. And one of the shows isn't actually *opening* but we do have an invited dress rehearsal.

But still. My point is. It's a busy week.

First up, Partial Comfort Productions presents the 2nd Annual BATTLE OF THE BARDS:

Youngblood is going up against six other companies in this annual fundraiser, which is like a Battle of the Bands except, you know, with theater. We placed a strong second last year, which has left us with a massive, aching chip on our shoulder. And it's always fun to do an overamplified, underrehearsed 10-minute play in an airplane hangar-sized superclub in front of 600 patrons and a celebrity panel - and this year, there are actual bona fide celebrities! Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Durang, Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of the Public), Jo Bonney (shiny director), David Cote (Theater editor, Time Out), Diane Neal (Law and Order), and Amy Fox (head of FOX Casting)...

Then: the Youngblood Sunday Brunch, in which I am now acting. Oh, the humanity.

Then: Uncle Mister DeVore's TOTAL FAITH IN COSMIC LOVE at the Brick.

This show is simply lousy with Friends of Procrastinet: written by Uncle Mister, starring Beeg and Sanpete. Opens next Thursday, March 9; runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through April 1.

(The above paragraph should not, at a quick read, be inferred to mean that the show is simply lousy. The show should actually, if it's possible to say so at this point, be quite good. And if it's lousy, by god it'll be COMPLEXLY lousy.)

So, that's my world. If you're looking for some offline distraction and time-wasting, Friday night at the Battle and Sunday morning at the Brunch should do you pretty well, and they're only $10 each. And if you're looking for something more substantial, TOTAL FAITH should be a damn fine time (and it's only an hour long, and it too is only $10).

And then, MAYBE, next week I'll actually write some Procrastinet. Hope springs eternal.

Our Pants are Fancy!

Look at us, top-lined and Short-Listed on New York Mag's theater page:

PLUS - it looks like I'm going to be performing in this weekend's Youngblood Sunday Brunch. This is a rare opportunity for me to remind everyone why I stick to directing. Come check it out - Sunday at 1pm. $10 for brunch buffet, first drink included, two new plays, and possibly my very public humiliation.

For info on the new play fest OR the Brunch, go here.

UPDATE: OUR PANTS JUST GOT FANCIER!

From this week's Time Out New York:

The text of the blurb:

Breakfast of champions

In the pantheon of noble dramatic endeavors, dinner theater may rank only slightly higher than cockfighting and monster-truck rallies, but that won’t deter the waggish scribes of Youngblood, a collective of emerging playwrights based at the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

On the first Sunday of each month, the group throws its increasingly popular Youngblood Sunday Brunch, a spread of eggs, bacon, pancakes and Bloody Marys, along with new installments of two irreverent serials: Sexmento and Glory Days at Jesus High.

The toothsome tradition is the brainchild of Youngblood co–artistic director RJ Tolan, who explains that the brunch “lets us further [the group’s] ongoing mission to forge a tighter relationship between theater and alcohol.” On the serious side, he says that he considered a late-night series, but a breakfast-centered event seemed more original. And fresh ideas are essential to Youngblood, a 13-year-old group that distinguishes itself from the city’s other playwriting organizations (New Dramatists, Cherry Lane Theatre’s mentor program) by maintaining a saucy outsider stance. “It’s frustrating for a young writer to feel that, no matter how good your stuff is, nobody will take a chance on you unless you’ve already been baptized by the establishment,” Tolan explains. “So we’re trying to find new ways to get our writers in front of an audience. So far, the pancakes seem to be helping.” See Off-Off Broadway listings for details.

Power Naps

Naps are a strange thing. The act of lying down (or propping oneself up) to take a nap is a wonderful sensation, suffused with the awareness that you're about to take a little break, refresh yourself, treat yourself well. There's something a bit decadent about a nice nap. Which almost makes up for the act of waking up from the nap, which is an object lesson in life's fleeting pleasure. If you take a short nap, it's such a sushi-sized bite of time that it's over before you're aware of it. If you take a long nap, you end up feeling mugged and groggy.

I am lucky to have a built in "nap" mechanism: every time I go to sleep, I wake up fifteen minutes later. If I've gone to sleep for the night, I just roll over and go back to sleep in a few seconds. If I'm napping, I get a nicely timed fifteen minute power nap. Most of the time, I actually feel better afterward.

Naps are much on my mind right now because, with the show opening, I haven't been sleeping much. Saturday into Sunday became an all-nighter to work on the set, and Sunday was already full of things to do: a rehearsal, run throughs of the one-acts, notes on the one-acts, more tech, final dress, notes on final dress. Around 6:30pm I slipped into an office to grab a nap - there was no room to stretch out, so I grabbed someone's sweater off of a hanger on the door, put it on the desk and put my head down on it. I subsequently, of course, drooled on it - sorry, whoever.

I woke up my habitual fifteen minutes later, at least mildly refreshed. The only problem was: with my head on my arms, something must have been pressing on my left eye. I napped so hard that I mooshed my eye, and for an hour afterward my vision was all blurry.

Which continued a minor sub-theme of the weekend - a more graphic than usual awareness of the eyeball as, well, a ball. The set designer got a fragment of copper pipe in her eye at about 4am on Saturday/Sunday, and I had to squirt it out with a ketchup bottle full of water. As we tried to determine if it was gone, she held her eye wide open and swiveled her bloodshot orb around in a fairly disturbing manner.

Naps are also on my mind today because I spent the morning in an exhausted, maudlin funk (good band name: "and now, MAUDLIN FUNK!") until I grabbed an upright power nap in the one comfy chair in the work cafeteria. It worked like a reset button. I was much relieved.

Also: over the course of the weekend, I have re-learned how to properly use a sewing machine. The fact that I only successfully re-learned this AFTER stitching two major and prominently placed hems in the upstage curtain we're using will have to be addressed some time before we open on Wednesday.

That is all.

Long-Term Parking

Last Friday evening, I flew out of Newark to join the family in North Carolina. Last year, with the same trip to make, I had driven into work, parked the car across the street at great expense ($40, I think) and then driven out to the airport that afternoon (taking 45 minutes just to get *into* the Holland Tunnel).

This year, I had a much better plan.

I left the house at 7:30am, shot unimpeded across the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, flew up the West Side Highway and was across the Holland Tunnel and on the Pulaski Skyway 17 minutes after pulling away from home. The 1/9 express lanes to the airport were wide open.

At the airport, portable electric signs announced that the Economy Long-Term Parking was full, so the close-in areas were being reduced to Economy rates: $12/day for P3, one monorail stop from Terminal A. Hot.

I parked the car, walked the 100 yards to the monorail, and sailed smugly through the terminals and on to the AirTrain rail link to catch an NJ Transit train for my trip in to work. I got to my desk at 9:29am, on time for the first time all week. Smoove.

So proud was I of my parking spot, I considered not even telling Lisa how close we were to the terminal, and giving her a nice surprise when we got home, as we hop-skipped to our waiting car.

Something, though. Something was nagging me.

Yesterday, as we got ready to leave for the airport in Charlotte to fly home, I finally dug out my computer and looked up our flight info.

I closed my computer.

"Honey?" I said. "I've done a dumb thing."

You already know how this ends, yes?

We were flying into LaGuardia.

And I left our car in Newark.

So. We had to take a car service home. Because I left our car in Newark.

This afternoon, I will leave work early, get on the PATH train, transfer to NJ Transit, and transfer to the AirTrain to the Newark Airport because, you see, I LEFT OUR CAR IN NEWARK.

And we will have paid $60 plus tax to the Port Authority of NY/NJ for the honor of leaving our car in a parking lot in a different state when it could have been parked comfortably in front of our house the whole time.

For anyone not familiar with the region, let me explain this graphically:

I am the brightest.

Henry the Helpful Homophobe

So this morning I agreed to give buddy Sanpete a ride in on the scooter. Which meant two guys who each go about a buck ninety-five on a scooter with a 50cc engine. I figured we outweighed the scooter itself by at least a hundred pounds.

We were stopped at a light when a Honda Accord got stopped in gridlock just in front of us, perpendicular so that the passenger was about ten feet in front of me. He looked at us, looked at the scooter, made eye contact with me and started saying something. His face had really lit up, like he had noticed something important, and he was tapping on the inside of the window.

Finally, he rolled the window down a crack and pressed his face against it, eager to tell me what was on his mind.

"Yo!" he said. "Yo! That's HOMO!"

I waved and shouted "thank you!" as they pulled away.

We laughed for the whole rest of the trip about that. The best part was that he really looked pleased with himself, like he'd passed along a helpful tip that we might somehow have missed. Like "Oh, my god, THANK you sir! We might not have noticed that one fully grown man clinging to another fully grown man's back like a biker bitch on a smallish scooter had ANY GAY OVERTONES AT ALL. And by the way, that sweater is FABULOUS! Is that 100% acrylic? You shop at Kohl's, don't you, I know you like a bargain!"

Thank you, transit strike, for helping New Yorkers pull together.

We didn't endure any more outright abuse, though Sanpete reported getting many pitying, sympathetic looks. "It's all right," they seemed to say, "we're gettin' by however we can..."

And off we wobbled, like a couple of bears on a tricycle...

Lookin' Great in '08

I watched a good chunk of C-SPAN last night, for the first time ever. It was a show called "Looking Ahead to '08" or some such, and it focussed on a potential presidential nominee from each party: Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachussetts who has been so active in the war against gay rights in that state; and Mark Warner, the outgoing (as in "his term is over," not as in "fun at parties" - see below) Virginia governor who is the Democratic flavor of the month thanks to his Lieutenant Tim Kaine's democratic gubernatorial win in Virginia last month.

C-SPAN, remarkably, didn't offer any commentary. They did 45 minutes on Romney, 45 minutes on Warner, which consisted of extended footage of each at recent party-operative dinners - working the room and giving a speech.

Romney's segment was first, and let me tell you: this man can work a room. He's charming, funny, easy, puts people at ease, listens really - REALLY - well, and he's tall and handsome. If you took Martin Sheen and stretched him like taffy to six foot two, you've got Mitt Romney.

His speech was great - self-deprecating humor, a "straight-talker" vibe that actually felt genuine, a ringing defense of "Republican values" that reminded you that many people - including, even, a few politicians - actually believe such a thing exists.

The weakest chunk rhetorically was also the most reprehensible ethically: his attempt to claim America's culture was "under attack," that his state's court had "damaged the institution of marriage," and that "every child deserves the chance to have a mother and a father - a right which is currently under attack." Huhwhuh? Don't get me started.

Lisa and I kept turning to each other in horror. "Oh shit," we said. "This guy is GOOD." Charming, "straight-talking," true believer, pragmatic conservative. Of course, he's also an ultra-right-pandering Mormon. Awesome.

I came into the show loathing the very idea of Mitt Romney, seething at the mention of his name. And watching him work, I couldn't help liking the guy.

We waited, anxiously, for the Warner segment to begin. "Come on, Warner!" cheered Lisa. "I've heard really quite good things about him," said I, hopefully.

They switched to Warner, answering questions before an event.

Three minutes later, the TV was off.

Look. Yesterday, I didn't know anything about Mark Warner except that Democrats are currently pretty excited about him, that he's been raising money well, and that Barack Obama has been sniffing around his camp. Today, I know only one more thing: he doesn't play well on TV.

He who plays better on TV wins. Period. The end.

Who knows who the eventual nominees will be. I will make this prediction right now: Romney vs. Warner would mean another 4 years of a Republican presidency. Romney vs. Clinton would mean the same.

When's the last time you saw a Democratic nominee on TV and thought "Gosh, I just sort of *like* this guy"?

Let me guess. '92 and '96, right?

Romney's got it. We need someone on our side who has it, too.

If you're a Democrat, do your party a favor: throw your weight behind the next candidate you get excited about *when you see them on TV.* Not when you read about them - not when you hear their ideas. When you see them on TV.

(ps: Obama '08)

That's Not Funny

So the 25 year old teacher (above) who had sex - repeatedly - with her 14 year old male student has plead guilty to minor charges to avoid jail time. I know a lot of people are making light of this situation, and I think that's inappropriate.

This woman committed a serious crime. And she deserves to be punished for it. Just think: until the day he dies, this poor boy is going to have to cope with the fact that his life will never, ever, ever get any better than it was when he was fourteen years old.

Verbing the Noun

I've stayed mum about the Harriet Miers nomination, because I have nothing to add to the current state of commentary. But this caught my eye today:

"I immediately sent the dues in to remedy the delinquency," wrote Miers, President George W. Bush's White House counsel. "The nonpayment was not intentioned, and I corrected the situation upon receiving the letter." [Emphasis Added]

So maybe that's a typo. Maybe, in her written statement, Ms. Miers actually said "the nonpayment was not intentional."

But I suspect otherwise - I suspect she was falling victim to a major trend in the [abuse of] [evolution of] the English language: verbing nouns.

As Calvin once said to Hobbes: "Verbing weirds language."

As Hobbes replied: "Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding."

I'm not sure I'm ready to have the law of our land as handed down by the Supreme Court participate in the weirding of the English language as derided by a comic strip.

But I don't intention any disrespect.

The Ack

Apparently slogging around a damp basement for 48+ hours and sleeping in ten minute bursts is not good for one's health. I have undertaken this study in the interests of public improvement and the common good. I can now report: boo. And hiss.

I have a generalized case of The Ack today: temperature of 100.5 this morning, with aches and pains and sore throat and dry cough.

A thumbnail review of my usual posting topics: Tropical Storm Wilma has formed in the Caribbean, may be headed for the central gulf coast (though long-range forecast track is "low confidence"); Apple has announced another press event, this one hyping "pro innovations," though The Unofficial Apple Weblog depressingly points out this release only went to press already registered for the NYC Photo Expo that the event dovetails with, so may NOT mean that I get a new PowerBook on Wednesday; yes, bird flu is probably going to be a pandemic, so start spending your good thoughts encouraging it to weaken itself in virulence terms at the same time that it mutates to jump person-to-person.

Feminism and the Right Wing

I followed a link from Kevin Drum to The Corner - the National Review's group blog. The National Review and the bloggers of The Corner are what my lefty blogroll would call "Wingnuts." I don't read them enough to know to what level of general offensiveness they usually take things, but in my quick perusal today there was nothing terribly inflammatory - just snarky, witty thoughtbites from clearly smart people who seem to believe the diametric opposite of most of what I believe.

I was startled to note, however, the level of offhand vitriol they have for feminists and feminism. It's clear in every word written about Harriet Miers' sponsorship of a feminist lecture series - to these right-wingers, feminists and feminism are The Enemy. (Okay, maybe not THE Enemy, but certainly AN enemy).

It never occurred to me that, in 2005, there were still whole bastions of people who loathe feminists. I mean, sure, it's pretty well accepted that capital "F" Feminists can be overly intense, humorless, tiring to talk to and generally no fun at parties - but loathing? Spite? Outright animosity? I had no idea.

Here are some phrases snipped from a long post on the subject:

Who is Harriet Miers? ...First, have a look at this piece by Texas liberal, Molly Ivins... Ivins argues that Miers is strongly anti-abortion, yet otherwise more feminist than your typical Texas conservative...

...makes sense of the feminist lecture-series mystery. That series is named after Louise Raggio, a prominent feminist lawyer from Dallas. Raggio and her fellow Texas feminists supported Miers... sympathetic to liberal feminism... the most like-minded female president the feminists could get.

...payback to Louise Raggio and her feminist allies... By all accounts... Miers is sympathetic to at least some of what her feminist allies believe. Does this include sympathy with affirmative action? Probably. After all, Miers got elected by feminists, who supported her chiefly because she was a woman.

...doesn’t think twice about associating herself with a lecture series that invites the likes of Gloria Steinem, Pat Schroeder, and Susan Faludi.

...she is used to working in coalition with, making concessions to, and often sympathizing with, feminist liberals...

...Her election to the bar as the candidate of feminists... now it emerges that Condoleezza Rice, may have had a key role in backing the Miers nomination. Rice is also one of the administration’s key backers of affirmative action... ...her history is that of working with, and making concessions to, feminists to her left. ...history of building coalitions with liberal feminists...

When someone from the Right uses the term "sympathizing with" I assure you they don't just mean "feeling their pain." We're only a decade or so past the time when "Communist Symp" was the worst kneejerk insult a conservative could toss. The Left sympathise with people; the Right "sympathise" with the enemy.

Upstream a bit from the feminist discussion is a reader tip, sent in because they knew the Cornerists would enjoy it. From last week's SNL:

Anyway, the fun part for you is that the DeLay character says they can't go back to Washington because Bush named "that bra-burning women's libber" to the Supreme Court. "Was Jane Fonda busy?"

Fun fun fun.

President Obama, Part II

Slammed this week, so posting will be sparse. But I just stumbled onto a post by Barack Obama, on Daily Kos, addressing the more radical members of the Progressive movement who are demanding orthodoxy in the Left, which also serves as the most eloquent primer for principled politics I've ever read.

An excerpt:

The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives' job. After all, it's easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it's harder to craft a foreign policy that's tough and smart. It's easy to dismantle government safety nets; it's harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It's easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it's harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that's our job. And I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.

Oh my gosh do I like this guy. If you've ever wanted to see truth and insight spoken with strength, go read the whole thing.

Boy is this a campaign I would work on.

Chung Ling Soo: The Bullet Catcher's Chop Suicide

There's a shop on our block, which I'm sure would like to be called an "Antiques Shop" but doesn't quite get there. Maybe it makes it all the way up to "Junque Shoppe." They started up about two years ago, when a dude moved into the empty storefront with a stock of yard sale merchandise piled up on the floor and some folding card tables. Since then they've gradually improved their stock and presentation, painted their name on the awning, gotten some shelves and racks and other signs of increasing permanence, but their prices have stayed outrageous: a dinged-up Squire electric guitar in the front window, for instance, was tagged at $250 when a brand new one actually costs less.

Last week I noticed a big piece of art out front. It was a strange piece, in a Chinese Imperial theme but with the composition and feel of Russian post-revolutionary art. A man in oriental garb was pushing a bemused-seeming woman into a cannon in front of a backdrop that reads "Chung Ling Soo."

I was immediately taken with the piece, but since it was a five-foot-wide original oil painting at a usually overpriced shop, I assumed it would be prohibitively expensive. I really liked the idea of this painting in our new bedroom, but our budget right now can only handle original artwork when it's found on the street (like the one we picked up last week for Max's room - thank you, Park Slope!)

On Sunday it was out front again. On a whim, I stopped in to ask how much it was. If she had said $350 I wouldn't have been at all surprised. $200 was about as optimistic as I was willing to be.

"You mean the BIG one?" asked the girl.

"Yes," I said, "the Chinese-y one." (Chinese-y? What am I, Archie Bunker?)

"That's $75."

"Oh," I said. "Ummm... Oh." I hadn't planned on having to think about actually purchasing the thing. "Hang on," I said, "let me go talk to my wife."

Lisa was out on the sidewalk with Max (and Procrastimom, in town for an impromptu visit). "It's $75," I said.

"Oh," said Lisa. "Ummm... Oh."

"Yeah," I said.

"We shouldn't be buying art right now," she said.

"Yeah. But I just realized I have that much in my personal account." (Yes, I have an allowance. Don't mock. It works.) "I was going to put it into the Scooter Fund..."

"BUY IT," says Lisa. She doesn't like the idea of the scooter fund.

After some more back and forthing with the counter girl, who indicated that no she couldn't move the price any because the piece was on consignment, I bought it.

Pencil marks on the back reveal the painting to be entitled "The Bullet Catcher's Chop Suicidie (Chung Ling Soo)" from 1982. As it turns out, there's a story to it - or at least to the scene it depicts.

Immediately upon getting the thing mounted (it happens to be exactly the width of our new bed) I went to google it. Nothing came up for the painting title, so I checked under "Chung Ling Soo."

Turns out, Chung Ling Soo was a rather famous turn-of-the-century magician. He was really a Scottish American named William E. Robinson, who was a failure as a magician ("Robinson, The Original Man of Mystery") until he shaved his moustache, put on a fake pigtail, and became famous Chinese conjurer Chung Ling Soo:

He never spoke onstage, except an occasional "thank you" in broken English. He made a fortune touring Australia, and returned to New York with over two hours of material.

The climax of his act was the Bullet Catch, a trick that Houdini deemed too dangerous to perform. An audience member would mark a bullet, which was then fed into a gun and fired at Chung Ling Soo, who would catch it and drop it onto a ceramic plate.

For the trick, the marked bullet was palmed by the performer and replaced by a plain bullet, which was loaded into the gun. But the guns were in disrepair, and gun powder from the dummy chamber, meant to provide the bang and flash but not to shoot the bullet, leaked into the main chamber.

Robinson was shot in the chest, cried "My god, I'm shot - drop the curtain!" and died in the hospital the next day.

Later rumors had it that Robinson was in debt and that his wife was cheating with his manager, and that his death was either an elaborate suicide or murder.

The (unnamed) painter of this piece titles it a "Chop Suicide" but shows Robinson as Soo stuffing his assistant - his wife - into the cannon. His face, turned towards us, is cryptic:

More info on Chung Ling Soo is available at Answers.com (through wikipedia), Hat-Archive.com, and various others.

There's a great gallery of his posters, originals of which now fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction, here.

It Happened

(click for full screenshot)

You know why this was worthy of a headline, a story to itself and even a CNN "Breaking News" email? Because this is the first time, in 4.7 years of his presidency, that this has happened.

I can't complain that it has finally happened. I can hope that he enjoys the feeling and decides to do it more often.

In the full screenshot, I've accidentally captured part of an ad that says "Yes, It's That Easy!" I think there's a fair chance that it really will be that easy - he mans up, takes one for the team, and everyone goes "okay, well that's just what I'd expect a stand-up guy like that to do."

On the other hand, I think there's a fair chance that they've been right all along with the "never admit fault" tactic, and that this will just put more blood in the water for the "BUSH MACHINE GOING HAYWIRE" feeding frenzy currently afoot.

Other Websitey Goodness

So the official Katrina hiatus is over - we've now lapsed into sheer sloth. Plus Ophelia can't make up her mind whether she wants to be a hurricane or just sort of chill out with her buddies smokin' weed as an unmotivated tropical storm, or whether she'd like to storm northwards or just hand out off the Carolina coast making forecasters pull out all their hair. Which means my current spate of hurricane-blogging is also in a lull.

In the meantime, I'm designing the Youngblood website, which will be launching soon. I've finally gotten over my mental block against learning Dreamweaver for web design. Sort of. I'm still using it a bit like a monkey uses a stick, but hey - monkeys went a long way using nothing but sticks.

As the more eagle-eyed (or totally bored) readers will have noted, Roaming Reviews is back in operation! Our sister site, founded under the stewardship of PJ only to have him laid low by both a stroke and his tacit refusal to learn how to post, has been on ice for a while; but now, frequent contributor Scotso the Lawbot's wife MrsLawbot has taken the reins. So go check it out, and drop her a line to congratulate her on her new web presence.

Why I Love the NHC

(Yes, more hurricane-related coverage. Whee!)

I've been reading the National Hurricane Center reports at NOAA avidly for the last couple years. I've become something of an amateur meteorology geek. The forecasts are usually entirely dry toast, but on each storm they have periodic "Discussions" which can get fairly chatty - which always creates some cognitive dissonance, as they're printed in an all-caps format that looks like some primitive teletype machine.

Things have been freaky in tropical cyclone-land since Katrina, with two hurricanes - Maria and Nate ("NARM!") - and one tropical storm - Ophelia - currently churning up the Atlantic but barely moving.

Ophelia, who sprang up yesterday morning as Tropical Depression Sixteen, right on top of the Bahamas and the Florida coast (something I've never seen happen in three years of avid NOAA-watching), is frustrating the heck out of the meteorologists as they try to figure out where the heck she'll go.

Here's Forecaster Avila getting a little punchy while trying to keep up with the computer models (all the obscure acronyms):

MODELS CONTINUE IN GREAT DISAGREEMENT WITH REGARDS TO THE TRACK. THE GFS WHICH LOOPED THE CYCLONE BACK TO THE WEST IN THE PREVIOUS RUN...IS NOW SHOWING A TRACK TO THE NORTHEAST. THE NOGAPS WHICH EARLIER TURN OPHELIA TO THE NORTHEAST AWAY FROM FLORIDA IS BRINGING THE CYCLONE BACK TO THE U.S. COAST. THE GFDL STUBBORNLY INSISTS ON A TRACK TO THE WEST-NORTHWEST TOWARD FLORIDA...AND THE STORY GOES ON AND ON. SINCE THE OFFICIAL FORECAST DOES NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF MAKING SUCH LARGE CHANGES IN TRACK EVERY SIX HOUR...THE BEST OPTION FOR WEAK STEERING CURRENT SCENARIOS IS TO MAINTAIN THE CYCLONE NEARLY STATIONARY. THIS IS BASICALLY THE SOLUTION OF THE CONSENSUS.