Apollo's Creed, or: One ignorant egomaniac deserves another

I'm not really much of a news junkie, but I read this article yesterday about a girl suing a man because she got attacked while wearing a t-shirt with a stupid slogan that he made. Only in my imagination and cheesy superhero movies did I think such greed and idiocy existed on such a common-day level. I shouldn't find this surprising by now.

First off, when I saw "Obama Slave Shirt Sparks Lawsuit Threat," I thought it was some lame hipster being dimwittedly "ironic," by putting the cover of the New Yorker or something on a t-shirt to show how retro-yet-handy he could be by using an iron-on transfer. When I read the slogan on the t-shirt, though, "Obama Is My Slave" interpreted immediately in my mind as "Obama Is My (Sex) Slave." Like something a young female collegiate liberal would display upon her bosom to flaunt her passion to the candidate and yet still remain edgy. Then a few girls saw "slave" and "Obama" in the same sentence, got pissed, overreacted, whatever.

Then I read that she reportedly "threatened to sue" for "all he's got." What, did she not have her contacts in when she purchased it? Did the shirt, possibly intended for pajama use only, fall in a convenient spot on Laundry Day? Was she a Hilary fan? Did she spot a future trend and think it was a secret DaVinci code when she couldn't read anything offensive on it when looking in the mirror? There's a good blonde joke floating somewhere in our midst. Or, when viewing it in conjunction with his other work in his one location, was there any doubt at all what point his designs were trying to make? Especially in light of his childish pretension?

Perhaps she honestly didn't realize how offensive it could be to others; maybe she herself was an edgy collegiate liberal who wanted to make a bold statement at that night's Young Democrat meeting by broadcasting her political lust for the dashing nominee. That being said, I doubt that any clear-thinking human being, after making any of the aforementioned excusable lapses in intelligence or judgment, would then return to the store and threaten to sue his ass for a purchse that she made of her own free will.

At least Apollo Braun is unabashed about what an egocentric prick he is. He's protected by the First Amendment, and hot damn, is he going to make the most of it. All sardonicism aside, this girl agreed with a controversial statement enough to buy it on a t-shirt and wear it in a massively public environment. But she wimps out when it receives the bad end of the controversy that it was, for all purposes, intended to garner--then has the audacity to retreat further into cowardice by saying that Moron McHack is now responsible and owes her money and ass-kissing. I'll give credit where credit's due, but I think she just maxxed out her victim card. You make your statement and you stand by it--or else the First Amendment isn't worth gravel.

I am not saying the other girls were right or even justified in attacking her. Nor am I discounting the shock and fear that she probably went through. It could have turned into a nasty, nasty situation very quickly. But you know what? She was "cursed at...for her shirt," "pushed," one girl "pull(ed) the earphones out of her ears, another spit in her face." No permanent injuries, no damage to property, nothing but an unfortunate confrontation. Every citydweller has one. Hell, I bet they have at least five or six.

Not so fast, Apollo Braun. You may not be at legal fault, but you're still guilty of being a douchebag. I couldn't care less which candidate he supports, but the least he could do is make his reasoning make sense. Braun is Jewish, and says the only thing he likes about Obama is that he is black, which "opens the door for other minorities," yet says Obama "reminds (him) of Adolf Hitler," a man who organized the systematic intentional extermination of everyone who did not fit into the Aryan status quo. And then, in the same breath as that argument, right when he's flashing his own Victim Card about being Jewish and subject to discrimination, BAM! He "does not like Obama because 'he is a Muslim.'" Go ahead, Apollo. Use it as an insult. Don't worry about it being completely incorrect. If it's in large enough font, that makes it true. It'll be ironic, right?

Oh, so the views expressed on your t-shirts aren't yours? Not even with BOTH of your names obnoxiously immortalized in the lower right corner? I'm sure your SoHo market demographic is full to the brim of "ordinary WASPs" who staunchly believe that America is not ready for a black president. It's ok, though. I have a few designs that I whipped up myself that I think would suit both you and them:

I realize that I'm giving him exactly what he wants when I pay this story the least bit heed, him being the attention-whoring cartoon of a person he is. The joke may be on him, since I doubt anyone reads this anymore after I stopped writing for two months, and any kind of traffic I could bring him is ghostly in comparison to this story being on the front page of Metro yesterday. But you know what, I'll take the high road. I hope that he gets a ton of myspace friends that he'd never even heard of before. I hope that people drop $69-$250 when they're desperately seeking to be edgy like everyone else. I hope people follow in his lead and puts everything that comes out their mouth, ear, or ass onto a t-shirt so that everyone who didn't get sprinkles on their ice cream when they were a kid can finally feel like they've contributed to society in some fashion while they're waiting for their lawsuit settlement checks to roll in.

A Cry For Help, Right Next To the Ice Cream

I'm kind of worried about Seth, you guys.

He keeps putting stuff in the freezer.

I mean, it was fine at first, when it was just the tofu, alcohol, and coffee. Then a few weeks ago, I discovered his suit coat chilling with them during a routine snack check. He'd worn it out the night before, so I suspiciously dismissed it on grounds of drunken absentmindedness. I can't even count the amount of times I've woken up the next morning with star-shaped stickers on my face, bags of chips I didn't remember buying, only wearing one shoe, with vomit maybe not all in the toilet. Pretty tame, I know, but comparable to a frozen suit coat. He told me later that the night before, someone got gum on the sleeve and he knew that sticking it in the freezer would make the gum easier to remove. It was gone after a few days, and I forgot about the whole incident.

Until this morning, that is, when I found a stack of records snuggling next to each other by the icy wall. They were a bunch of old vinyl in their old original sleeves: Best of Sondheim, Xanadu, Sinatra in Pal Joey, Edwin Drood. He'd hung them up in his room two different ways in the two months we've lived here, and now they've been degraded to this. And the level in that Ketel One bottle hasn't gone down a millimeter.

Please, Seth. You know that you can always come to me, especially if you have a problem. I'm here for you, whatever it is. We'll figure out what to do. I just don't want to be the first to get there if we ever get a cat.

That's what she said

Almost two weeks ago, Seth and I moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn. The bathroom doesn't have a sink and we don't have internet, but we have our own rooms, so we're pretty satisfied.

I went away to Kirksville for a week, which I plan to give its due attention later. When I got back, I found to my dismay that the gentleman who was supposed to have hooked up our internet was in fact not a gentleman at all, but a douche, who was surly to my roommate and gruffly remarked that there were X amount of things that he needed before he could connect us to the system of tubes that supplements our post-collegiate procrastination. He told Seth to make a date for the next week.

There is a smattering of wireless connections floating around our space. They are all password-protected and typically-labeled, save one: a saucy unsecured network dubbed Tompkins Is Pussy. It might as well be named Carmen Sandiego, for it is as elusive as it is alluring. In our desperation for convenient Facebook, Seth and I asked our English-speaking neighbors what internet services they used and how good the connection was.

A friend of ours knew someone on the first floor, and he said, "Yeah, Steve's been on Tompkins Is Pussy, but it doesn't last very long, and it's really hard to connect to."

Without even thinking.

No sleep 'till Brooklyn

So I guess the reason I haven't written this week is because when I haven't been working, I've been travelling 140 blocks uptown to visit apartments that until yesterday I thought were in our price range. Since then we've had to lower the bar about $100. When I haven't been on the subway, I've been napping, since I usually average about 4-5 hours a night. When I haven't been napping, I've been either at the cold reading sessions for Ten Grand Productions (the reason why I am not reduced to a trembling mass at the bottom of the loony bin) or at the gym, burning off the copious amounts of reduced-fare Easter candy that I've felt compelled--nay, forced--to consume as a stress-management tactic.

And the reason that I'm sitting here clicking away in between rows of pink half-dollar Peeps and guilty snatches of Seth's Hershey Minis (except the Special Darks, lest I want my throat slit), is because I need five damn minutes to unwind after the news that Seth and I definitely need to be out by the 31st (which means in three days settle on an affordable apartment in God knows where, apply, get accepted, and move our stuff), because someone definitely dropped the ball when it came to communication, and this time you can't say we weren't doing our part.

It's like ten thousand spoons whan all you need are your hands and tongue back

Usually I'm not very good at spotting these things, but nonetheless it seems ironic that I would move to a big city to find acting work, only for my first show to be directed by Truman alumni.

It seems similarly ironic that I would get to play Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, a play that I've never studied in any of my classes and had never read on my own. Not just I-was-supposed-to-read-it-for-class-but-I-had-to-label-every-song-in-my-iTunes-by-genre-and-scrub-the-toilet not studying; it wasn't even covered by the curriculum. I skimmed it when I was preparing, but I considered it as equally valuable to brush up the plays with which I was more familiar, and since there were more of those, that task vacuumed up more time.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Not a bit.

Small (Town) World

The stage manager led me into the room where I was supposed to read for Katharina in Taming of the Shrew with two other people. There was a blond lady, a man in his late twenties, and a dark-haired lady whose name I knew was Sabrina. I got ready to begin the scene.

"Let's see, first of all, Meredith...." They pointed at me like I was the perpetrator in a police lineup. I gulped. "You went to Truman!" The man and Sabrina threw their arms up in celebration.

"Yeah, yeah! Who went to Truman?" I asked.

"We did!" they both responded. Joy surged through my every capillary.

"What year?"

"Two thousand one," the man replied. "It'd be right before you came, so I think Alan Altmansberger would be still around that you know."

"I totally know Alan! Do you know Randy Bame?" I exclaimed.

"Hell yeah I know Randy Bame!" he laughed.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Brian Waters," he said.

"Oh! I've heard of you!" It rang a heavenly choir of bells; this guy played a key role in many of Randy's tales of the olden days when he first started working in the auditorium.

Suddenly, I didn't feel quite so nervous anymore.

A Hermit Among Men

When I was younger, I read a story in which the main character's family got a new refrigerator, and she and her younger brother took the box it came in and made it into a playhouse. They cut out holes for windows, decorated the outside with marker, and would have had sleepovers in it had their parents not forbade it.

My family was not extravagant enough to purchase a new refrigerator, so most of my special places were behind the furniture or under tables. I decorated a few of those with markers, too. One time, though, my mom brought home a box that was large enough for me to fit in. I was a tall kid, so this was a big deal. I sat in this box (while also under my desk) to read, write, and color, before it split up the sides from oversittage. Not even Scotch tape could fix it. When I first heard the term "anti-claustrophobic," I was quick to identify.

Tonight I saw a man pulling a cart down the street which was tightly piled with crap mounting taller than himself. He reminded me of a sort of hermit crab, though instead of pulling along his house, it was his possessions. This was nothing new to me, only this time inspiration struck. Now, I don't ever, ever wish to become homeless, and I don't see it happening at all, but in the unfortunate, unlikely event that it does, I decided what I would do. I'd stake out Ikea or a department store and find their largest refrigerator box, or at least a decently-sized washer/dryer box. I'd get a dolly or two, or at least a few skateboards or something, and hook them up to the bottom. I'd fill it with my pillows and blankets, decorate the inside and outside with markers and collage trinkets, and pull it with me wherever I went. When it broke, I would make another, and though the lack of showers would be a deterrent, the absence of rent payments would balance out a thing or two.

There Will Be Strawberry Jelly

There was an Oscar party yesterday at Seth's friend's house. I think between he, I, her, and her roommate, we had seen about half the films that were up for consideration overall, but we'd each seen Juno at least once.

In the station on the way there, a saxophonist played "And I Love Her" for spare change. If he hadn't been on the opposite side of the tracks, I would have given him spare dollars. Among other things, this prompted Seth and I to spend most of the ride there singing "Bohemian Rhapsody."

This is the same friend that we spent both Christmas and the Superbowl holidays with, and so we inadvertently established a tradition of toting copious amounts of food on the train and stuffing ourselves silly upon arrival. We'd agreed that our dishes had to correspond to a nominated film. Her roommate got mini pecan pies and jelly to stand for the meat pies and blood in Sweeney Todd. Seth got french bread and baby brie for Michael Clayton, and pickles and peanut butter for Juno. I brought milkshake supplies for There Will Be Blood.

I watched a Barbara Walters interview with Harrison Ford in a segment before the ceremony. His first agent had told him that he'd never go anywhere in the business. She asked him if it bothered him that he never won an Oscar. He said no. I think I'd rather have his career than an Oscar, anyway. She asked what he would most like to be remembered for in his lifetime, and he said, "As a good collaborator."

The red carpet pre-show only made me feel contrary. The other three spent that half hour criticizing the hell out of the outfits and actors, and I spent it contradicting them out of spite, regardless of whether or not I agreed. Which usually I didn't.

I was already ripe with a food baby before Jon Stewart got warmed up, and my best friend didn't win his category, but mostly I didn't have any major beef with the decisions. I especially enjoyed the Tribute to Binoculars Montage, when the voice-over announcer stumbled over an actress's name, and when one of the winners for Best Original Song got to come back on and make her acceptance speech when she was cut off by the musicians.

Perambulance

I was walking with Seth in the park this past unseasonably-sunny-yet-seasonably-chilly Thursday, when our ramble was interrupted first by the crescendoing squalls of an approaching baby and second by a man hurriedly pushing this angsty child in a stroller past us.

My initial annoyance was superseded by my impressed realization at how sly that trick was. I imagined him having a twenty-minute distance to cover in ten or less before the old lady came home and bitched at him for leaving his dirty socks on the floor again, or for potentially making them late for the six-month-old's play date. Instead of sighing in resignation, it would strike him to gently nudge the child awake or take away its Dora the Explorer until you could hear its wails in the East Village. All he'd need is a blue and red flashing light. Sidewalk traffic would clear to his advantage, and he would make it back to the apartment with minutes to spare. Crying baby! Very urgent! Stand back!

Or he could have been a pushy asshole. Whatever. Since I plan to keep this tactic in mind for future use, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

A 15-Minute Brush With Fame

I served coffee to Phillip Seymour Hoffman this past Tuesday. I didn't freak out or gush or get his autograph, because that would not have been professional. And by professional, I don't mean barista-wise, I mean acting-wise. Maybe that's a little pretentious of me. But he did look really tired. He got a triple espresso (in case you wanted to know), so he must have been.

(But yes, I blushed like a Catholic hooker, and yes, my hands shook the whole time. And he smiled and thanked me and left a tip. What a gentleman. I want to buy all of his movies.)

I was really geeked out, and continue to be, but it also reminded me that I got to meet Danny Glover in Kirksville almost three years ago. And when I was younger, I met the guy who played the older brother on The Wonder Years when he was signing autographs at the Target store.

Somehow, this reminiscence merged Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with Andy Warhol's "Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, etc., etc." principle, which seemed ot me a stupid one anyway, because what did he mean by "fame"? Did he mean local fame, or national, or international fame, or somewhere in the middle? How many people would have to hear of them to constitute "fame"? Does posthumous fame count? Did he even bother to take into account that technology could get so wide-reaching and specialized that socitety might eventually fragment into as many individualized demographics as there are people themselves, each person choosing only what he or she wanted to see and hear and consume in their own private Idahos?

Therefore, I conceived a much more plausible, easy-to measure postulate. Each person in the world will have at least fifteen minutes of meeting someone famous. It counts if you are chatting in the grocery line with Bill Gates for five minutes, take a minute to get Scott Baio's autograph, and spend ten glorius minute sharing a cab with Danny Elfman on the luckiest night of your life. Maybe not the best one of his. My point is, it can conglomerate if needed. If you happen to be famous yourself, great. Not only will your work be taken care of, but then you can spread the joy of meeting someone famous to others.

Fifteen minutes at a time.

Gotta start somewhere

I can honestly say that doing theatre in Kirksville has prepared me, in some extent, for auditioning in New York, because my first one was last night and it was one of the most amateurly-run ones I'd ever attended.

That was not really meant to be a slight to Kirksville or the people running the auditions, by the way. I'd had certain expectations of "doing theatre in the real world" and all it entails: directors dismissing you on the spot or twelve seconds into your monologue because you were too short/tall/blonde/old/plain/pale/etc, lines spilling out onto the sidewalk and stretching around the block.

I got there two hours early, anticipating a line. Not only was there none, but it turned out that the location was to be in the auditorium of a Catholic girls' school. My fear was replaced by a creeping arrogance. I came back about twenty minutes before sign-ups, and there were a few girls waiting.

It was for a "festival" of five one-acts, four of which had parts I could fill, and three of which were directed by the playwrights. The directors set up stations in five different areas in the auditorium where actors would rotate around and do cold readings, which I was prepared for.

I was first in line to read for the excerpt from Waiting For Lefty, with a twentysomething gentleman with a photocopied headshot that looked like he had peered facedown onto the copier and pressed "start." The director handed us the scripts, told us where to stop reading and gave us a minute to scan them. I asked if we could take them outside and read them over with each other first. "No, no, that's all right, you can just read them here," she said.

For the other three I wasn't so lucky; they handed me the script and told me to go when ready.

One of the director-written shows had a character that was so shy she didn't talk, but instead wrote down what she wanted to say on index cards, and was "somewhat of a clairvoyant," and at one point we had to gather around her and mime looking at what she was predicting with belief/disbelief while two other characters exchanged dialogue.

The ratio of females to males was about 12:1. That was about the odds, I found, of their ability matching their headshot quality. Except for that first guy, they all had lovely headshots.

I'm really, really not writing this to make fun of anyone. I enjoyed being involved in Kirksvillian theatre, and these people were very kind. Yes, they were amateurs in every sense of the word, in that they were doing it purely for the love of directing and sharing stories theatrically with others. And, yes, I was also hoping for something a little bigger and better; I came here to start acting professionally. I wanted a little challenge. But I suppose if there's anything I should have learned here, it is "just because it's New York, doesn't mean that it's always going to be bigger/better; it only means that there will be the full platter of extremes," from hollow extravagant Broadway to the greenest of newbies.

There is another next Tuesday. I'm really hoping for that other extreme.

Not a creature was stirring. Or so we thought.

My other two housemates went home to California for the wintertime holidays, which left Seth and myself with a little over a week of having the place entirely to ourselves. After sharing a room for the past two months, we literally (but not really literally) exploded across the apartment, though reluctantly we had to pack it all back in when it came time for their return. Rachel moved back in on January first, and Matt on the third.

And in the meantime, so did Minnie and Fievel.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the ol' sleeping futon, yacking with Seth and getting ready for bed, when a small furry thing darts from the closet out the door and into the bathroom. I've stared down bulbous cockroaches and lurking subway creepsters without blanching, but at that moment I let out a shriek that would put Fay Wray to shame and leaped--nay, launched--backwards in your classic jumping-on-the-chair moment.

My mom trained me good and early to not be afriad of squishing bugs, as our ground-level apartment would attract the occasional creepy-crawly; though in my college years, I grew guilty when it came to spiders and let them free, and my dog would usually eat most of the insects before they came to my attention. This was the first time I've had to deal with vermin that are actually cute.

"What is it?" Rachel called from the other room.

"Ummmm...I think there might be a mouse."

"Aww, it's okay. Here, let me try to find him. Where did he go?" She got a strainer off of the dish shelf. "Here, Mickey....Come on out..." She peered into the bathroom and behind the suitcases in the hall, but found nothing. "Here, Fievel....Shit. I'll get the poison."

"Christ."

I felt awful. When I was a kid, I wanted a mouse for a pet. They were soft, kind of tame, didn't eat much, and the one in The Witches could do tricks. I'd even given myself the nickname "Mouse" for a grade or two in elementary school. Now, not only did I have to be responsible for their extermination, but there was also the liklihood that I'd witness one writhing to its poor little death after devouring seemingly innocent peanut butter-coated blue pellets.

During a Futurama marathon a day or two after Christmas, while we made as much noise as we wanted and took liberal cigarette breaks out on the fire escape which our roommates forbade us to go, Seth heard a rustling in the garbage bag by the door. He poked it, listened, and after a moment there was more rustling. "I think the mouse is in the trash bag," he said.

"I think we need to take out the trash," I replied.

We thought the coast was clear, especially since the poisoned peanut butter clumps were disappearing from the mouse dish outside the cracks in the wall borders. All was well until the day after Rachel returned. I walked into our room and Seth said, "I have bad news. The mouse is back."

"Oh no."

"And it's a baby."

"Oh shit."

I wanted to be the all-American kid from New York City

Seth and I went up Broadway this morning to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's true that television adds ten pounds, or in this case, about an hour and a half, because it was shorter and smaller than I had anticipated. It also made me hate large crowds of people a little more, especially if those people were pushing baby carriages, and especially especially if those baby-pushers had a knack for running over my toes. It also didn't help that every third balloon had "MACY'S" stamped all over it, as if we could forget that This Parade Was Sponsored By Macy's; Shop Macy's, For All Your Christmas Needs. But it was worth a visit if you want to see a Pikachu the size of your house chasing a Poké Ball the size of your car, which I most certainly did.

My favorite float was filled with Muppets. Actual-size.

We ate lunch-dinner at Marissa and Jesse's in Brooklyn, where they are renting a room on the top floor of a townhouse owned by Bela Fleck's brother. We ended up splitting four bottles of wine between the five of us there and feeding turkey bits to Louie's twenty-one year-old cat Iddy. We'd all made the food ourselves, most of it for the first time. Marissa remarked as she was spooning out the mashed potatoes that it made her feel like such a grown-up. Then she proceeded to knock the spoon out of the bowl and get potatoes all over the table and floor.

I'm sure Iddy got most of them for us.

True Class

Currently I live a block away from a homeless shelter, which at first I thought was an old folks' home until I was informed otherwise, and also explained the abundance of homeless people that hung around my block. Every so often I get hit up for cigarettes or spare change, always politely, though usually I have nothing to give them.

Today I left my apartment and was walking to the street corner when I passed a man wearing thick layers of clothes and a dirty cap. "Miss? Miss, excuse me, miss?" he called to me gently. I stopped and turned, anticipating a request for a dime or a smoke.

With soft brown eyes that belonged on a month-old kitten, he beseeched, "Will you do a hit of crack with me?"

"No thanks," I refused genially, and continued walking.

He called out after me, his voice filled with delicate longing. "I'll suck your pussy!" he pleaded.

At which point I snickered, and walked a little faster. Oh, well in THAT case, sure, why didn't you say so?

First runner-up attempt to lure me into the bedchamber with dulcet tones and winsome charm:

"I'm gonna fuck you tonight!"
~Sketchy guy around 7th and 50thish

I Could Have Maybe Possibly Seen Paul McCartney Yesterday, In Theory, Like Hypothetically

I was having dinner with Lindsay at a Mexican restaurant, and she started telling me about the show that her roommate was in, which we were going to see afterwards.

"It's a performance piece--it's called 18/6, like eighteen-slash-six. There are projections, and people painting circles onto a canvas, and other stuff. It was done in 1959, and they're doing it again because of some anniversary thing with it. The playwright was really, really specific on how he wanted everything to be done, like he wrote out the exact movements, and dimensions of the set, and timing and audience instructions, and how many years after his death it would have to be before he would authorize it being re-released. It was this really underground thing back then, and for some reason it got really popular. They were hoping it would stay more underground, but the mainstream got word of it, and all the nights are sold out. It's kind of a really big deal." She looked a little sheepish. "Oh, yeah, and also, the guy who's painting circles on the canvas, it's going to be Paul McCartney--"

I choked on my tamale.

"--but not tonight, it's just a dress rehearsal, he'll be there another night. I guess that's how important an event this is supposed to be."

We took the subway to Queens and walked about six blocks, when we came upon a gaggle of warehouse spaces at a dead end overlooking the East River. Lindsay said to "look for one with the garage door half open," which made the event sound more eerily "underground." We entered and saw what looked like the skeleton of a really small house, with transparent plastic stapled to the frame to make walls, red and white and sometimes blue light bulbs lining the top beams, and divided with the transparent plastic into three rooms. They gave us brightly colored cards with handwritten instructions on which rooms to go for parts 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. I was in room 2 for the first two parts.

Imagine your typical performance piece. Stereotypical, even. This was it. The actors entered, walking slowly to a beat. There was atonal music. They moved linearly and robotically, turning at right angles. They did some poses. One guy said monosyllabic words at irregular intervals. They left as they entered. Two minutes later, two actors re-entered, stood on opposite ends, and read two different speeches--on "art" and "time/perspective" that occasionally overlapped.

I switched rooms. The actors entered again. One girl stopped in front of me, grinned grotesquely, and began mechanically, rhythmically bouncing a small rubber ball. At one point she fumbled and it rolled by my feet. She held out her hand simply, her eyes imploring. I gave it back, and she resumed the bouncing. I wondered if it was part of the show. The actors came back, lined up, and screeched a few notes on some instruments--a small banjo, a kazoo, a recorder, and a violin. I switched rooms.

They re-entered. Some posed again, one stood by a projector while slides shuffled, one marched back and forth in front of a mirror, stopping every so often to brush his teeth or straighten his tie, and one squeezed oranges into juice and drank it. They exited. They re-entered. They pulled down scrolls of paper from a bar, read the different monosyllabic words on them all at once, and then marched off. It was over.

Lindsay and I left. She looked at me quizzically. "There were so many metaphors," I said wearily. We laughed. One of the girls afterwards made a remark about how it was "obviously" social commentary. I didn't get the obvious part, but I can go back in places and see where it could have been.

What I got from it was that performance art is not really my cup of tea. But I understand where it fits in the spectrum of theatre. I once visited a boyfriend when he was working at a theater in rural Indiana, where they essentially did choreographed musical revues for old people. The one I saw had a circus theme, and took 90 minutes worth of songs out of context in order to loosely wrangle them around elephants and trapeze artists. Thay even threw in "Send in the Clowns" because it had "clown" in the title. My boyfriend at the time complained about working there, saying that it wasn't what he wanted to be doing, that this wasn't art, he wasn't "creating" anything or making people think. Which was true; it was theatrical Cheez Whiz, icing, full-fat mayonnaise, purely for pleasure and stress-free entertainment, requiring no mental commitment.

Last night was the exact opposite. It forced you to not only forge connections for yourself, but decide where they would be forged, and when, and what the metaphors stood for, and if there was even any meaning at all. It was like they gave you a glass, a cow, some spices, pasturizing instructions, and then a hollow book of Les Miserables with a soggy Fig Newton inside. What I saw could have been very, very deep and over my head, or it could have been some playwright laughing his ass off at the thought of five actors walking around like robots and bleating nonsense. It reminded me of a story Rachel once told me, of a guy who one a poetry contest with a poem that consisted of one word: apple. The sponsors justified this because they said his poem made you question what a poem was, and what it meant that this was being classified as "good" or "winning" poetry, etc, etc. Or it could have been some frat guy who did it on a drunken whim.
Regardless, it suceeded in facilitating discussion and brainstorming between the two of us, even if it was only on the nature of what constitutes art and legitmacy and how we both preferred the middle ground, like Shakespeare, which I guess would be like fine Cheddar. Or Moliere, which could be Brie. Neil Simon would be American. Andrew Lloyd Webber--maybe Kraft singles.

The show is sold out for its entire run. Tickets ran around $250. I can't exactly call them suckers, though, because some of those lucky shits will actually get to see Paul McCartney.

Gnosis

"The Origin of Love" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch started playing from my iPod over the sound system at Oren's. I was toiling over various milks and shots when my boss, doing the same, remarked casually, "You know, when Hedwig was off-Broadway, his drummer, Dave, was a manager over at the Waverly store."

"Yeah?" I said, intrigued.

"Mm-hmm. Actually, the bassist, Chris, was also an assistant manager at the store on 79th. And John Cameron Mitchell's boyfriend at the time, I don't remember his name, was a keymaster at the store on 3rd. He ended up overdosing, though, so he's no longer around. It was really very sad."

"Wow!"

"Yes, and actually, the guitarist also worked on 3rd with John Cameron Mitchell's boyfriend. And Chris's girlfriend Kara also worked at the 79th store, but she wasn't a manager. And, Stephen, the guy who wrote the words to the songs--"

"The lyricist?"

"Right, his name was Stephen Schwartz then, but he took his boyfriend's last name, so now he's only known as Stephen Trask. Stephen worked part-time here, on 58th. Pretty much everyone in the band except for John Cameron Mitchell. But he was the only one who stayed with it when the movie was made."

There was little left to do but marvel. And finish the drinks.

Tit for Tat; or, The Mermaid Used to be Topless

I had the day off today, and all I managed to do was shuffle from Starbucks to Starbucks, buying iced coffees in near-November.

I was doing a crossword from last week's New York Times at one of them when a thirty-something man with shoulder-length dreadlocks tapped my shoulder and gave me a Sharpie sketch he did of me while I was at my little table, on a vocabulary-induced high from my orthographic binge. I was confused at first, not only because I didn't know what "Craps Natural" (five letters, ends in VEH) was supposed to be, but also that I wasn't sure if it was one of those things where he expected a donation for his gift. He left a minute later, so I guess not.

It was so nice a gesture that I bought today's New York Times from the front counter and left it behind on my table for the next person when I went home.

Even though I kept today's crossword.

And Goldidith said, "This job is too odious. And this job is too boring. But this job is just right."

Finding work here is easy.

My first inclination was otherwise, given that in Kirksville or St. Louis it's usually fast food or the highway, but it's amazing what a college degree and some customer service experience can give you. Or in the case of Ricky's, a pulse and some faint brain waves.

Ricky's is a health/beauty/Halloween store that hires every warm body with an inactive criminal record and active green card in October to handle their huddled masses yearning to be Dracula. At first I was excited because I worked in SoHo, I could put together a cool costume, and they had Ben Nye makeup. The work itself wasn't bad the first day, a Tuesday, but the manager was a condescending ass, and it didn't help that I could barely understand what he said. I also heard more remixed versions of "Umbrella" than I could stomach. On my way back home, I stopped by Gizzi's, a coffeeshop/cafe I'd applied at through Craigslist, and talked with the manager, who said she might be able to start me on Thursday.

The first task they gave me at Ricky's the next day was to run the money from the day before to headquarters. I went, not sure if I resented this or not, but made full certain to stop by Starbucks on my way back. The next four hours were spent on their smallish second floor-- walking around, putting costumes back in their packages, and helping people. All the real work I did could be condensed into maybe seven minutes. This was not for me.

On my way home, I met with the district manager of Oren's Daily Roast, a Manhattan-centered coffeeshop chain which just sold coffee and beans, as opposed to every food under the sun that one could eat with coffee. They essentially made me an offer I couldn't refuse--larger starting wage, a raise after a month, benefits after three months, in a high-traffic store. I agreed to check out the location I'd potentially be working at. This was right before Allison, the manager of Gizzi's, called me back, confirming that I'd be able to work on Thursday.

I opened at Gizzi's at 6:30 AM with Louise. She was nice, the store was cute. We got to play our own CDs over the sound system, which was cool. It had only been in operation six months, so they were still a little inconsistent in some things. It also meant that they were slower than JavaCo in wintertime, which worried me that I wouldn't be able to pay the bills. But the final sign came towards the end of the day.

"I'm going to go upstairs and put on the radio," Louise said. "Allison's about to come in, and she hates the Beatles. And I think that CD is next."

This was not going to work.

I had an hour between when I was off there and when I was supposed to work at Ricky's that evening, so I went to 58th and Park to meet with an Oren's store manager. She agreed to hire me and I'd start training on Sunday. As I rode the subway back to SoHo to work at Ricky's another seven hours that day, it occurred to me that I was technically employed at three different jobs. It also occurred to me that I'd probably be late to work anyway, so I ended up just quitting and going home. I quit Gizzi's the next day after my shift ended.

My boss at Oren's sings along when I plug in my iPod to the speakers. So far, so good.