Le maudit Mo D.

Samizdat!

I am VERY pleased to learn that this year's Beyond the Borders Improv Convention and Croquet Bonspiel will be Communist-themed:

A huge Maoist salute to Craigy for this. Especially the golf club and sickle.

Yesterday I was thinking about the WORST meal I've ever had in a restaurant, which was a slimy bowl of green noodles at this dump called Republic Noodle House in Manhattan. Republic's interior decor consisted of oversized arty posters of Red Chinese leaders, omitting images of the Red Chinese factory workers for our gustatory pleasure. Seating consisted of low wooden stools at large communal tables. I don't remember what I ordered, but it was a medium shade of green (I guess-lighting was expectedly dim) and had overdone noodles and cucumbers and a completely disgusting sauce that tasted like the tears of the proletariat. The Smith bitches I was eating with sternly discouraged me from sending it back, so I doused this bowl of mess with every complimentary sauce I could just to get it to a palatable level. It turned cold quickly. I scowled and counted the minutes until I could be outside and get a pretzel from a street vendor.

Still, I appreciate the Commie motif of the fest this year.

how i am not like you

Another Oscar season came and went and Mo here barely blinked an eye. Movies, you say? Rarely do I venture out to see movies, and if I do, they had better be some pretentious arty shit with handheld camera work and some ugly vagrant-ass looking dude's uncircumcised penis representing something about society. Okay, I saw Borat, and I hear our spiritual boyfriend Al Gore got an award for riding that cherrypicker thing in An Inconvenient Truth.

If you frequently see movies, I am not like you.

I also never watch television shows. I've got better things to do than watch that network retardation or pay for cable! Actually, we're getting cable this summer for my recovery enjoyment. If I'm going to be bound to a chair for 2-3 months, I might as well whoop it up with I Love New York or similar shite. Though I am not supposed to laugh during that time, lest I cause myself excruciating pain.

If you frequently watch TV, I am not like you.

I worry that I am not friendly. I feel socially disconnected from everyone except Bob and the Geegsters. I am a bad networker, and as such, I am usually overlooked for non-Geegster improv shows. Unless I get into one and then quit because I need all my time to be stressed about getting popped open and because I can't divine my musical past without mentioning a certain architectural tool. That's terribly winning of me, yes? I am a good improviser and a nice person, though not necessarily in that order.

If you are friendly and a mad flesh-presser, than I am not like you.

If you like architectural tools, Sebadoh, and the mid-nineties, then you are like me.

I really love my puppets. They are an extention of my and Bob's creative selves. They make me happy.

If you do not like my puppets, then I cordially invite you to sod off hard.

In these times

1) I am still roiled over that damn Smith development letter. Please, just let me at Megan Douchebag for ten minutes! I will turn her ass around and make sure that she gets good and embarrassed about sending a letter to 40,000 Smithies that basically said that because she's so awesome, send the college money! Women between the ages of 22-102, all of whom have job stress, health stress, child stress, house stress, money stress, who don't give a shit about Megan Douchebag and need a better reason to give to Smith! Megan Douchebag, on second thought, I will buy you a beer, just so I can give you a little Smithie combat conditioning, accompanied by some ruggers and some Adas who can adroitly explain to you why your letter sucked ass!
2) The offices of prominent thoracic surgeons are tough to deal with. They don't return phone calls on time and confuse you with other patients. I am thinking of adding to the surgical mix the two dudes up in Minneapolis who do the surg. For some reason, I can't imagine Meenasohtans being anything but polite and prompt. Regional stereotype or darn tootin' good customer service?
3) I readied my submission for the WLT Mannyscript competition today, wasting over 100 sheets of white paper stock in the process. Thank you City of Austin Recycling. I made a shitload of niggling edits to the first ten pages of my novel, changing single words and adding little bits. The first ten pages are half set-up and half Olivia/Eric interaction. Today I wrote the part at the end of the book where Eric dumps Olivia for a noodly twenty-year-old indie fuck named Katy Shea. Booya, Katy! Some of my friends are getting cameos as minor, easily-disliked characters, because I like them
4) Bob is hard at work readying our home for a bevy of fine IKEA products with catchy Scandinavian names. Indeed, last Saturday, we survived the entire IKEA gauntlet. I fucking hate shopping and of course we got pissy at each other during the last half-hour or so. After three hours of getting to know all of their fucking rad products wtih catchy names, I rewarded myself with a $1 cinnamon roll. The check-out area is sprayed with nummy cinnamon roll odor, so I had to try one. For a dollar. They smell better than they taste, which is on the dry side. Bob, super meatotarian, opted for a hot dog.

telephone telephone

My week is made up of telephone calls. So many responsibilities via phone.

I must:
*Call surgeon in Baltimore for appointment
*Call surgeon's nurse in Houston and ask more questions
*Follow up with Beyond the Borders hotel guy
*Find a caterer for the LAFF fest
*Cold-call some college activity planners for ATX
*Find out how much a first-class ticket from Baltimore costs, if I do the surgery there. My ass deserves to be mad pampered after the shit goes down.

Last night's Geegster show was really fun. It was "Backstage: The Musical" and had a diabolical ending. I enjoyed Shana's "Pass the squeeze." I played Allison the fat girl whose overbearing mother (Julie) forced her to take dance lessons before usurping her place in the dance school.

dumb smith bitch

I just got the most heinous advancement letter from the College. This completely out-of-touch overachieving twat spends two pages detailing her many admirable accomplishments while at Smith, spewing marketing drivel and inviting me to "join [her] in providing this priceless opportunity to others by giving to Smith again." I wouldn't even buy this bitch a beer, much less contribute to her fucking future.

Rather than write her an e-mail telling her just what an insipid, thoughtless, vain, and out-of-touch douchebag she is, I am going to contact the Smith development office and ask them to allow me to write the next development letter. Sure, they'll balk, saying that nine years out of the place I should have more tangible successes under my belt before I go representing for the College. They only like to flaunt women who are art museum curators and state senators, not pre-published novelists and improv comedians. But, I'll counter, I'm just an average alum. People can relate to me. I'm funny, and my unorthodox approach to Why You Should Give (I believe you should give, just not because Megan Douchebag '07 is such an overachiever) would be intelligent, realistic, respoectful, and would not make anyone want to vomit. I'm not sitting on a tufted stool bragging about being student government president because here in Alumnaeland, that is a meaningless accomplishment. MEANINGLESS. I'm sure her parents get off on bragging about her and are elated that their kid thinks that 30-year-olds give a rat's ass about her house officer positions, but obviously it hasn't occurred to her that alums don't live their lives the way she does. Fortunately, she's only got three months left of her little Northampton dream world. May life's disappointments kick her swiftly in her ass.

Fight Like a Brave

Sock and Snail won their second Cagematch last night, over some Hare Krishnas who were into comic books or something. Snail/I blew his/her/my wad on the two totally tasteless jokes at Sock's expense that I had in my pocket. The first one was that Sock's mother was famous for being on the cover of a certain Red Hot Chili Peppers album. And that if Sock didn't knock off his bullshit, that Snail was going to give him away to a teenage boy. "Y-E-L-L-O-W!" That one got a HUGE laugh and I suspect secured the puppets' second victory.

Sock and Snail also enjoyed a rousing rendition of Journey's "Snail in the Sky" and Sock exclaimed, "Say it loud! I'm a sock and I'm proud!"

Sock will be in West Virginia next weekend at the annual World Hosiery Forum, sponsored by Snuggle. Snail will be inviting some puppet friends to join him for next Friday's third crushing victory over whomever.

Never underestimate the power of puppets! Snail managed to hijack an entire conversation last night just by being on my hand and nodding his snaily head. There was this jarring silence--all eyes were trained on the puppet. Snail and I didn't mean to hijack. Sorry. Snail also brings out the best and the worst in people, I have found. While most people enjoy talking to/playing with Snail and this he's damn cute, he brings out in other's their inner sniveling asshole. Some associates of mine dropped a few notches on my mental totem pole for responding poorly to Snail. Some people see puppets and walk away or turn aggro and try to hurt the puppets, which is so not cool. While I am loathe to remind myself that the puppet is not actually a free agent, I am a bit baffled as to why someone would take pleasure in pummeling my hand/beating Snail in the face.

Says Snail, "I'm a theatrical tool, assfuck. And damn cute, too!"

Y'all have been warned. SNAIL RULES.

TONIGHT:
Girls Girls Girls!
last show of our Jan/Feb run!
10pm
Coldtowne Theater
fortyeight ohthree airport bullevard
behind j'aime le video

Dude, where's my lung?

No, seriously? Where's my lung?

striking

I am reading a medical report done on me in April 1994. I was 18. I was having my second Marfan Syndrome screening, which was inconclusive. Anecdotal medical evidence states that my heart should have exploded by now if I do have Marfan, so I guess I don't. But back then I did have my bowly bowl. The report states:

"Examination of the thorax shows a striking pectus excavatum..."

I don't know what the doctor meant by "striking," but perhaps that meant "bad" and perhaps she should have suggested surgery, which would have been far less traumatic and painful at age 18 than it would have been now? I could picture 18-year-old me not wanting to have the surgery at that time. Start Smith a semester late? (this would have been around the time I got my acceptance letter) That would have meant "not moving away from the house of horrors on schedule," which 18-year-old me would have HATED. It probably would have been less painful to do it at 22, after college and before the exciting and fulfilling post-collegiate period of 1998-2003, where I did a bunch of stupid shit that in retrospect was completely expendable.

I think I am going through all those stages: denial, anger, fear, and ultimately acceptance. This is my blog, so I can be as insufferably turdlike as I want. I will state right now that I will not be insufferably turdlike on the Austin Improv Forums. That is in poor taste.

SOCK and SNAIL
supremely awesome puppets
take on
a non-puppet improv outfit
tonight at the
AIC CaGeMatCH
11pm
The Hideout

anhedonia

I've started to notice that very few things are bringing me pleasure and happiness these days. I attribute this to the upcoming thoracic chop-socky. Today as I was eating lunch (dashi bowl!) I was paging through the latest Chronic and everything was about Fuck By Fuck Off, and it made me grumpy. Since when do I hate bands? I like bands. Still, I can't get behind FXFO '07. Professional hipster starfuckers showing up, eating our breakfast tacos, and befouling our local hotel rooms with AXE products and spooge. Fuck them.

I went to pick out my La-Z-Boy Luxury Lift Power Recliner today. I was hoping to be able to buy a traditional La-Z-Boy, the one with the faux-woodgrain hand crank that one uses to lift up the foot portion of the chair. I had a difficult time operating it pre-op, so with eight broken ribs and dissolvable stitches in my pec muscles, I figured I would be unable to operate the chair at all and pictured myself getting trapped in the chair, while having to pee, and being trapped in a urine-soaked La-Z-Boy while doped up on Oxy is not how I want to spend my summer, so I am going to have to purchase the motorized geriatric recliner w/optional heat. I will decline the heat. Because summertime in Austin, the last thing I want is a heated chair.

On the La-Z Boy website, there is a picture of an OLD DUDE operating the LUXURY LIFT. F! That's me. I'm spending my summer pretending to be 90.

The upholstery I chose is a sage green color, and very fuzzy and soft. I told the lady it felt like skinned Muppet and she laughed.

UPDATE: I just looked at the Zen website and discovered that the Dashi Bowl contains 121% of my recommended daily sodium intake! And 895 calories! Holy crap! Here I thought I was eating something moderately healthy, but I might as well be eating pizza or something. Boo!

the yogurt violators

I read this article today in the NYTimes, and now I can't stop thinking about frozen yogurt and Southern California. I went to the Pinkberry website and observed that the closest location to my mom's house is in Temecula, about a 50 minute drive away. Temecula is more of a bedroom exurb of San Diego than an irritating shithead enclave of LA, so going there for a single serving of frozen yogurt would only be mildly ridiculous.

I, like Joan Didion, am from California. So separated from it I feel I can only discuss it in Didionesque terms. Which is pretentious. I left when I was 18 and have only returned on a visit-only basis. I always knew deep down that I would never make my adult home there. It's not just the crowds, the cost of living, droughts and earthquakes, and the deeply retarded focus on physical appearance there that drove me away. It was something else. My soul and the California soul just don't match.

Still, I hate it when people start bashing California. It's a large, diverse state. The Valley Girl population is rather small. In my mind, it's a bunch of Mexicans plus some irritatingly misguided white people plus a beach. And tacos. And Fresno, of course. Fresno is like LA's wanna-be stepsister that tries way too hard to be cool. Fresno had a mission and a purpose and that was to be an agricultural outpost. Feeding the masses is a noble cause, but someone's fat Armenian wife got in the way and started demanding nicer things. Pretty soon, the fruit orchards and vineyards within the city limits were plowed over to make room for pink stucco strip malls, some on all four corners of an intersection, where the wives of wealthy men peddle useless wares in gift shops named after their spoiled children that serve more as hobbies than businesses.

I had a terrible dream last night that I had to go back to high school. I didn't understand why I had to go back, but I did. Awful, awful dream.

I had the best lunch today at Casa. Enfrijolades with black bean puree, guacamole, and sunflower seed goo that stands in for cheese and is salty and delicious. Their salad dressing is always gorgeous. I feel so good after eating there.

bowl soreness

As of a few seconds ago, I have been experiencing soreness in my bowl. This comes and goes, but the more I think about surgery, the more my symptoms pop up.

For those of you who have not had a chance to enjoy the bowl in all of its bowly goodness, here is a photo:

It gets sore right at the very bottom. Just sore. Sometimes my sides hurt. Other times my heart starts beating in a jiggly way.

I guess I really do need the surgery after all, huh?

low-end theory

I went for a walk this afternoon. It was a shiny, warmish February day in the ATX. I managed to find no need for my hoodie in this weather, so I tied it around my waist, a practice I picked up on the playground of Manchester N.E.R.D. Elementary back in the day.

My house is a few blocks from a daycare center. As I was walking past it today, I observed the adult on duty having words with a small male charge. '"Stop picking on her so hard!" she said to the little boy. "You keep hurting her feelings." The small female charge was bawling her eyes out.

These kids couldn't have been a day over 3. They were cute and tiny and had extremely low centers of gravity. Little little kids, still babies even, being shits to each other. Humanity sucks.

On my walk I also encountered, on two separate occasions, small, squatty schnauzer-type dogs who went out of their respective ways to run to the fence and bark at me. One stupid little piece-of-shit dog was all the way on the other side of his yard, saw me quietly walking down the sidewalk, and booked it over to be an asshole at me. I dislike dogs for this reason.

There are at least 1500 people in the Austin metro area who would love to go out for gelato with me right now and my husband is not one of them.

Hmmprrffphffffff.

intriguing obit watch

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/obituaries/14melton.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

The creator of slippers has passed.

Slippers!

Sock and Snail prevail!

Last night Bob and I performed together on stage for the first time in nearly two years. We perform at home everyday, especially with our beloved puppets Sock and Snail, but rarely does this husband and wife team take it to the stage. The four of us (Bob and Mo and Sock and Snail) took it to the AIC Cagematch last night, where we reigned victorious over Jessica and Kristin's positions as five-week victors.

Puppets trump all. Bob could have scratched his balls for twenty minutes, but as long as there were puppets active and present on stage, it was comedy gold. Gimmicky, but it works.

We invited an audience member on stage to describe her day, and then Sock and Snail reinacted it, but with special Sock and Snail-type activities (like when Sock Turtle Waxed Snail's shell). I grabbed a cheap joke when they went to eat at a Brazilian restaurant and Snail (my puppet) looked down and gasped, "Where's my pubes?!?" Cheap, but it got a laugh.

We won 11-0. LANDSLIDE. Thanks, puppets!

This was the first time I have won a Cagematch.

breakfast taco

I just made myself a breakfast taco (for dinner). It consisted of:

fresh wilted spinach
goat cheese
one egg, over easy
salsa
one whole-wheat tortilla

A rather dressed-up doodley-doo version of a breakfast taco, based on local standards. It was delicious, though.

I just ordered a Timbuk2 Custom Laptop Messenger Bag. Or rather, Bob did, since it is my overdoodly-due Xmas/Valentines/early berfday gift. And then I remembered: I won't be able to carry it for six months after surgery. How am I going to transport my possessions post-op?

Let me describe to you what I am going through with this surgery thing.

Imagine that you feel normal. Only your version of normal isn't normal at all. You have a major chest wall deformity. You've had it your whole life and never thought much of it, except as a cosmetic inconvenience. Your doctors avoided/ignored it up until about four years ago, when you started getting bronchitis all the time. And phantom chest pains. And heart palpitations. You added two and two together and figured out that it was the pectus excavatum that was to blame. Tests confirm that the thing is giving your heart and lungs trouble. They are squished and unhappy about it. That is why you have never been able to run or do sports, why you gasp and choke for air when you ascend a hill on foot, and why you can feel your heart beating in your armpit.

Still, this is your version of normal. You do everything you want to do in this life, except wear hotsy-totsy low tops.

You are thirty. Here are your options:

1) Have surgery. Surgery involves general anesthesia, a six-inch incision cut just below your breasts. The doctor will cut through the muscle wall to expose your offending sternum and costal cartilage. He will then break the cartilege that connects the sternum to the ribs and use wires and a bar to reconnect them. It takes about six months for the cartilage to grow back. In that time, you really can't do anything except sit around and wait for it to grow back. And the first two to four weeks, you will be in a lot of pain! After about six months, though, you'll be mostly normal, except for a scar. Complications include pneumothorax, fluid in the lungs, collapsed lung, accidental nicking of heart tissue, blood loss, and death. You will spend an entire season of your life stuck in a chair doped up on pain meds.

2) Not have surgery. Risk an aortic dissection or similar operable heart issue in your 40s and 50s. Continue to have heart palps and chronic bronchitis. Maybe they will get worse, maybe they will not. Not wear hotsy-totsy tops. Expect to die in your 50s or 60s.

Surgery involves choosing one of the twenty or so guys who does this surgery and figuring out which surgery you'll have. There are two types: Ravitch and Nuss. I've described Ravitch above. Nuss is used primarily on teens and children and involves making two small incisions on the sides and threading a thick metal bar underneath the sternum, turning the bar over and popping the sternum into place, based on the theory that the costal cartilage is soft enough to simply be bent. Adults who have had this surgery complain of long-term pain and soreness while the bar is in, usually for two-three years. I'm not sure this is the surgery for me. I'm very severe and from a physics standpoint, this seems ridiculous.

I will also have to travel to either Houston or Baltimore to have it done. I think I prefer Houston but the Baltimore surgeon has more of a reputation for this surgery.

It's an emotionally difficult thing, this surgery.

Ouch!

Mazel tov to Pgraph for the most fun hobo improv show ever. I laughed my ass off, esp. at Kaci wielding a spoon. Great show, guys!

Sweetie's got the sweaty

I started my Johns Hopkins-recommended yoga regimen today. I spent quite a bit of time upside down, contemplating the amount of space in my lungs. Indeed I found it difficult to breathe, being upturned. No one provided comic relief in the form of an embarrassing fart. I felt a bit glowy and melty afterward. I took my funky butt to Zen for a dashi bowl and then came home and reclined on the bed.

Bob is rejecting my requests to come home soon so that we can get our V-day dinner.

Our puppetty pals Sock and Snail will be debuting their own form of abusive improv this weekend at the Cagematch. Snail is a snail and Sock is a (real) sock. We may give Sock some googly eyes so he feels more puppety. Right now he's just a big cotton muzzle. Hurling invectives, of course.

Snail is known for his/her brash honesty and fondness for asexual reproduction.

sisters of the dent

I finally met a Sister of the Dent today. A fellow Pectus Princess who is thinking of getting her dent popped this year. Her name is Laura and she's a UT grad. I could tell by the way her shirt laid across her chest--all wiggly and unstable, just a piece of cloth with no sternal backing fluttering in the breeze betraying to me, who knows this shit, that beneath lies a significant salsa bowl. She poked at her chest and I was so happy to meet another person who can do the same freak-ass thing.

I like the surgeon on Houston. I might go with him, if I find that traveling to Baltimore for surgery is ridiculous.

I am still scared of this.

sweet potato-prov

Last night, as I was getting into bed with my snuggy lovemuffin/full-time squeeze Bob A., I looked at our light blue flannel sheets a little differently. Powder blue : Chapel Hill as Burnt Orange : Austin. Go heels.

The Geegsters had the serious DRAMA WEEKEND.

1) DRAMA #1: Dre spent the night before we left in the ER, complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath. We do not like it when our friends require hospitalization. We want Dre to be healthy and to show off her bad-ass opera-trained singing voice. So we began this journey at 5:10am with this.

2) DRAMA #2: The untimely death of tabloid celebrity Anna Nicole Smith. Cargill, the funniest Lady around, took this tragic opportunity to deliver some serious hilarity as well as some noisome farts. Indeed, travel with six ladies and one J-Rat is indeed giving away your right to privacy. I was openly mocked for having a bowel movement at 3am. To me, pooping is a 24-hour event, but apparently to the Geegsters, the ass must close up shop by midnight.

Geegster MILF Julie got mad hit on by the proprietor of Carolina BBQ restaurant. He even made her a copy of a CD. My love for pulled pork is boundless. We also had the first of many sweet potato-based food items, the sweet potato bread pudding w/whiskey sauce, which was outstanding. We then checked into our hotel, the plushly appointed Hampton Inn, where we learned of the ANS tragedy.

3) SUB-DRAMA #1: The Unclean South Theater is housed in a lovely old mill building that has been converted into a mall of boutiques, a diner, and their food co-op. I was absolutely flabbergasted that they built their theater space around these three heinous load-bearing pillars which obstruct at least half your view of the stage should you be unlucky enough to sit close to the aisle. I mean...wow. I would be seriously pissed if I paid $10 to watch a show and half of my view was blocked!]

4) SUB-DRAMA #2: Coldtowne did a really good show. I give mad props to Arthur's awesome, consistent, and strong elderly grandpa character. Tami's new hairdo looks really nice, too.

5) DRAMA #3: Our rivals, the NYC musical improv troupe, shocked the hell out of this musical improviser when they gave themselves an encore. They finished up their set, did their finale song, the lights came down, and when the lights came back up, as we were all grabbing our coats and making a dash for the door, they continued singing and came into the audience. It was an awkward moment.

We did, indeed, make brown bread out of them.

The other female troupe was good, too. I liked their format a lot.

6) SUB-DRAMA #3. Bitches are tired. This trip consisted of about half napping and half doing stuff. Jen and Jules were champion sleepers. I, on the other hand, was an insomniac for the first two days. I couldn't sleep for shit. Special props to J-Rat for being the only man over 35 that I know of who doesn't snore.

Also, let me take this opportunity to share this: if you travel to a festival, you might naturally assume that, in the application process, crap troupes get weeded out and only the best, most brilliant troupes perform. If only that were true. We saw quite a bit of mediocre improv. Even some bad improv. We also saw a show performed by capable improvisers with undeniably awful content. Hey, NYC: ANAL RAPE IS NOT FUNNY.

I know I am heavily biased, but in Austin, troupes dress for performance. Most troupes clearly did not put any thought into their outfits and just wore jeans and t-shirts. On the other end of the spectrum, there were a few troupes who overthought their wardrobe to the point of distraction.

Another one of my biases is that I prefer narrative/character driven improv. I know the Chicago school doesn't do that, but watching a bunch of badly dressed kids have weird conversations over and over again made me crave an actual story with a beginning, middle, and end. Most Harolds I saw lacked characters with names, defined locations, and consistent callbacks and other tricks that I really admire in an improv performance.

I need an improv moratorium for the next week. My head is spinning.

MAJOR DRAMAS: Dre landed back in the ER. She went off with one of her math friends for the day and she didn't call us back when we called her to tell her where we were having dinner. Shana went to be with her at the hospital while the rest of us were watching shows. I kept getting updates on my cellphone, which vexed the usher who prohibited me from returning to my seat after the second time I got up. We had a minor organizational spat regarding who would go to the hospital and who would stay, or should we all go to the hospital, or would Shana bring her to the hotel while some of us stayed at some of us went back to the hotel to meet her there. Being an avoider of confrontation, I just clammed up, happy to do whatever everyone else wanted. By that time, I had seen my fill of improv and just wanted to go home.

So we went back to the hotel and Jen finds out there has been a death in her family. Drama on drama. More drama. Drama. Sadness. Sad drama.

It all turned out okay. We still love each other and the troupe will go on! It felt good to get home. Yesterday was J-Rat's birthday and the goofball Southwest Airlines flight attendant sang him a birthday song on the intercom and gave him "Birthday Potion" which turned out to be hot chocolate.

The best fest, hands down, is the Beyond the Borders Improv Fest and Croquet Bonspiel right here in the ATX.

FOOD INDEX:

Carolina BBQ.
Crepes.
Omelet breakfast food.
Carrburrito #1.
Carrburrito fish taco w/the fabulous Robin!
Mediterranean Deli spread
Diner food.

All restaurants, except for the last diner, had sweet potatoes in the food. It must be a Carolina surplus crop. Which is a good thing. My troupe needed a little extra B vitamins.

brown bread

I feel like the brown bread we made out of them.

The trip was exhausting, physically and emotionally. Fucking A.

my dreams are in carolina

My alarm is set to go off at 4:30. That gives me enough time to apply clothing, brush teeth, grunt at myself in the mirror and wait for Cargill to show up at 5:00. Pick up Dre and Jules. Head to AUS. Check in. Coffee. Sleep in an upright and locked position. Deplane. Fart. Scratch self. Check into hotel. Party.

I'm heading to CH, NC in the morning for the Unclean South Improv Festival. There will be drinks and improv. And perhaps bitter competition and tears.

Geegsters
11pm
Friday Feb 9
The Artcenter, Carrboro.

Our first out-of-state gig! Whee!

Little Bro College Search

I loved applying to college. I was obsessed with it. During those pre-internet days, I would send away for college viewbooks--glossy color magazines of well-scrubbed multiethnic undergrads standing next to an autumn tree. And now, with my little bro, I get to go through it again.

Okay, here I turn into an asshole: I was a top-notch student. Good grades, strong extra-curriculars, and a heartwrenching college essay that just might have gotten me into a real Ivy League school, had I wanted to go. Though my SATs were average for Smith, the rest of my student profile, including my interview, was awesome. Scripps and Mills had a bidding war over me, but I went to Smith, turning down decent scholarships at the other two schools.

This may seem weird, but yes, I did apply to five women's colleges and two state schools as safeties. There was an article in Sassy that appeared, I guess 1992 or 93, entitled, "Do YOU belong at a women's college?" and I guess from reading that I decided I did.

Now that little bro is approaching college age, I am loathe to admit, the kid is a-v-e-r-a-g-e. He gets decent enough grades, but doesn't apply himself. Though it was a struggle to get him to join activities, he's turning into a theater geek and he likes photography. He takes the SATs this fall. So, I'm trying to find the right school for him.

My current list:
The Evergreen State College
Lewis & Clark*
Humboldt State**
UC Santa Cruz**
one of the Claremonts? Pitzer maybe
Hampshire
Rice
Kalamazoo College
UVM
Wesleyan
Vassar (ooh...he'd love Vassar. He belongs at a women's college!)
Sarah Lawrence

Art school, maybe?

Anyway, I am really looking forward to taking Sam east to look at schools. Yay!

*I would LOVE it if he went to Reed, but I don't think he'd like the academics. Socially, he'd be in heaven.
**My two state-school backups. A very nice English professor from Humboldt called me and tried to convince me to join his department, but I had New England in my eyes. No dice, buddy.

UPDATE: I did not get rejected from the thing I thought was going to be my third rejection. I was accepted. Yay acceptance!

rejection 1-2-3

The Geegsters got rejected from a festival today. Part of me is like, whatever, win-some-lose-some, but the other half is like, "what a pack of no-taste tards, rejecting US?" Indeed, so confident in the quality of our product, I am loathe to be humbled by this event. I am not moved to go over areas where the Geegsters should work to improve--indeed we have several, but to be rejected by this festival (there I said it--it wasn't Chicago or Del Close, fwiw)...is it personal?

I'm the only conceited elitist beyotch in the troupe. Maybe I half-assed the application?
Did I not provide aid and comfort to these people when they were in our city? Did I not make sure they had ample pizza and beer and a pillow to rest their heads?

Perhaps they don't like ladies?

I wasn't even planning to go, but still...

I also got a rejection for a job I applied for (didn't even get an interview!) and am awaiting my third rejection (they always happen in threes).

Going to Chapel Hill in 3 days...

hellraising fundraising

We had a fundraiser show last night, pulled in a sweet amount of money to fund our trip to Chapel Hill this week. The Geegsters did a really great show (Department Store, featuring live mannequins and the answer to the mystery of random numbers being read over the intercom) and we had a fun party afterwards. I went and got all the snacks and non-alcoholic beverages and was enormously pleased with myself when I only went $2 over budget. Sweet. I like it when numbers even themselves out.

I just auditioned for an improv show. I've never auditioned for improv before. It was for friends, too. Weird. I don't know how I feel about that. Trying not to think of it as a referendum on what it is to work with me. I was asked during the audition if for me music was experienced alone or in a group, which really caught me off guard. It's a hard question.

I drove past Molly Ivins's funeral on my way home. Or at least that's what I think it was. The Americans for Peace protesters were there, and only assholes protest funerals.

Early Influence

Here's an image that made a gigantic impression on me when I was twelve:

Actors David Strathairn and Blair Brown as Moss Goodman and Molly Dodd on the short-lived '80s sitcom The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.

For those of you who never saw this work of art, Molly was a newly-divorced thirtysomething in New York City who worked odd jobs and had a strange relationship with her family and her building's doorman, who claimed to know every single person in Manhattan. In season 2, Molly got a job at a bookstore run by Moss, an odd, nerdly fellow who wore glasses and cardigans and constantly looked at his feet. Moss and Molly became an item, doing it in the stacks of the bookstore. Ultimately, they break up because Moss is so damn weird!

Moss is probably my most favorite tv character ever, and I can say with some certainty that THIS is what 12-year-old me found crushworthy. THAT GUY. Cardigans and glasses have always made me weak in the knees.