kerouac says

i saw the lion king on saturday. a friend was coming to town with a group of norwegian exchange students, and asked if i'd "chaperone" with him if he bought me lunch and a ticket to the show they were seeing. i didn't actually have to help with anything except subway advice, which was nice.

lion king: if the giraffe puppetsuits do not make you happy, your mother probably never loved you. the rest of it i could take or leave, but the giraffes were my friends--and i liked some of the garth fagan-ness of it all, especially the mid-air tumbling that was all about making the love. and also when the elephant came out of the orchestra pit and then was followed by a baby elephant. also the baby elephant puppetsuit was being driven by the little girl who played baby nala, and when she came up out of the pit following the mama elephant, her trunk was caught on the mama elephant's butt, and she was all: whatever, i'm an elephant, i don't care about butts.

i haven't felt so bad in a long time.

i got home from a brilliant, lovely day of getting paid to do what i do--the only times, lately, that i get paid for this stuff is when a good friend of mine hires me to be sort of a resident improvisor for a company that works with advertisers and uses improv to come up with brand mascots--to find out that San Francisco Slim, the guy who likes to have sex with nineteen year old virgins while they're sleeping, is trying to find me again.

he called my parents. he googled me and then emailed a theatre company i worked with and asked them to forward a message.

the message said that he'd heard i was going to be in san francisco this weekend, and that he'd LOVE to see me.

and i have not felt so bad, not in a long time.

it took over an hour to get home last night, after the lovely day, including a twenty-five minute wait on an underground platform where the temp was above a hundred, even before figuring the humidity (this one guy had a thermometer, and kept announcing how hot it was). i was already cranky, and rehearsing my speeches about, see? see how this place is unliveable? and then there were these messages, and i spent the whole night crying like a jackass, trying to figure out one thing that would make me feel better about this admittedly awful thing that is not nearly as bad as awful things that happen to other people, and that i swear up and down is no longer the most important thing to have happened to me.

usually after a lot of cogitation and some un-sent letters, i can find a way in, sort of a point of entry. and i can gradually hollow out a small space, and it gets better from there. it eludes me, with this. there's really nothing but anger, and fuckeduppedly, i don't think it's him i'm angry at.

the monkey and i stayed up too late trading secrets about bad, bad things, and i cried out most of the hydration i'd managed to insert into my subway-braised body, and the a/c-less bedroom stayed at ninety-seven for most of the night. i'm still trying to think of one thing that will make me feel better, short of ordering a hit on this guy, and i'm really not coming up with much.

it seems not right that there are a few things that happen to you that put you in a different category. like you lose a parent and then you are Tragedy's Child. or you find out you're addicted to something and you have to start living your life as One Who Deals With It. i would give anything not to be the person who hung around after it happened, who walked to the kitchen and drank a pint glass of water and then decided to go back to bed.



a long time ago, maybe more than a year, i posted here about my anger and disbelief that seymour hirsch had referenced, in an address to the ACLU, tapes he'd viewed of abuses in Abu Ghraib that were more horrific than what had been released to the press. he specifically mentioned the screams of boys being raped. i got angry and scandalized and did a little research and called in to the Brian Lehrer Show and posted my indignation here. i mentioned that the only reference i could find on the web to hirsch's claim was through Al-Jazeera. i was offended that no one thought the remarks were newsworthy. and someone commented here that he'd trust the american institution over Al-Jazeera, anyday.

via bitch.

okay. re: last week: not cool to avoid posting for four days right after getting a nice link boost, i know. but, come on. we had this date with each other from the beginning. if i occasionally take off for cigarettes, you have to know i'm coming back. don't be sore. i know you, al, and i know you're away nursing your grudges. come back to the five and dime, little sheba.

i went to sheila's reading on friday. i got there early enough to take a side trip to buy myself a cookie, and then was told i was at the wrong theatre. but i made it from union square to the west village in less than ten minutes. i had to crawl in late and i was a little sweaty, but that was okay.

at the intermission, a friend-acquaintance came over to chat, and then his agent walked by. F-A was kind and introduced me by name, and the agent said,

" . . . and what are you?"

my jaw sort of dropped. i wanted to say: man, i have only ever heard people say that to other people in movies about LA. gross.



we did the reading with the people last night. the plays were not so good. a couple were okay. most were not. a few of the actors were really good. most were not. the monkey got stuck in an awful dog.


"allison! what a surprise. what are you doing here?"
"theresa, i was just in the neighborhood and thought i'd stop by."
"allison, have you come to meet the baby you carried for me when it turned out i was infertile?"
"no, theresa. theresa, i have feelings for you."
"allison, i have always known this. but now my husband is coming in."

and then the monkey comes in and does a very small dance, and then leaves again so the two women can kiss, which they did not do but only read as a stage direction even though they blocked the rest of the short play with realistic/naturalistic movement.

"theresa, what are you doing?"
"allison, i am kissing you. but i have no intention of leaving george."
"who is george?"
"he was just in here dancing."

we won a contest! that's him the photo, and i'm behind the camera.* (you have to scroll down to the one marked, "transit ipod.")




*certain readers whose weddings i have photographed can attest to my being a better photographer than that image would imply. just saying.

i'm in bryant park, mofos!

pros: outside. so nice. not humid. this folding park chair is oddly more comfortable than my expensive desk chair at work, which was clearly designed for a six foot tall man. when i put my butt in the butt spot, my knees hit before the end of the seat does, so i look a lot like Edith Ann and my back is killing me.

cons: bad pop band playing. reallly bad. these people all want to be in RENT. nice caterpillar that was crawling on the railing in front of me is mysteriously gone--i looked away and he had vanished. there are many of those small park birds around; i suspect foul play. the shady spot i picked has become a sunny spot and i can feel my shoulder skin burning and am too lazy to move.

i went to happy hour last night with my friend K-To, who's been abroad. we'd each had momentous conversations since she'd been gone. she broke up with her three-year boyfriend; i told the monkey that i was pretty sure, now that i'm on a more even keel, that i can say with certainty that i don't want to live here. i have another year in me, probably two, maybe even three, but i am actively looking forward to getting out. some time while he was at his summer stock gig i realized that the trial period has elapsed, and i am an unsatisfied customer.

good thing we just bought an apartment.

no, it'll be okay. we'll do some renovations and sell it without casualty. providing this "bubble" i keep hearing about stays intact.

but when i was telling K about the conversation, i asked her to imagine two pieces of sushi on a silver plate. one is my certainty that i don't want to be here a whole lot longer. the other is the monkey's sure feeling that he will not be ready to leave in two years. for now, we are just leaving them both on the plate, and sort of . . . observing them.

"just two small truths on a plate," i told her.

"turds?" she said.

"truths." pause. "or turds, i guess."

K-To nodded sagely. "truth turds."

yes.

(omg! the caterpillar is back! he was just hiding out in my blind spot! possibly this is emblematic of a greater truth! i mean, turd!)

!

the weekend is usually not blog time, but i just have to say: i, asshole is back.

(i wanted to say it like this so you wouldn't see the new link and think it had something to do with my own assholistic* behaviour as described earlier this week.)






*copyright Eric Ray Anderson.

there was this old guy on our block when we lived in queens who looked entirely crotchety. and he behaved all crotchety, too. even when he was doing something that i suppose was objectively "nice"--i slipped a little bit on the icy sidewalk beside my door last winter, and Crotchety was there, and he barked a gruff,

"watch yourself."

which doesn't seem very nice to me, actually. it sounds like what you say when someone accidently elbows you in the crotch.

(one time in high school we were hanging out at the evergreen state college campus and we all got under this giant army blanket and there was a lot of co-ed tickling going on until am elbow let fly and my friend matt brady said, very seriously, "sorry about your crotch.")

it's also not nice to have almost slipped on the ice and have some grumpy neighbor imply it's your own fault. i'm no more careless than the next girl, and i definitely don't wear those ridiculous foot-deforming shoes.

so i gave him a dirty look, but i stopped myself from tossing off a sarcastic "hey, thanks" because months before, when the monkey was out of town the first time, i'd run into him drunk (that's him drunk, not me) on the corner coming home from work. he called me sweetheart, and i looked at him levelly and told him he was not, in fact, my sweetheart. i hadn't broken stride, but he called after me:

hey, girl. you better watch it. i'm your neighbor.

in retrospect, it's possible that he meant that we were neighbors and so i should be nice to him (watch yourself) because of that, and that being nice meant pretending we were on "sweetheart" terms and that i didn't mind pet names meant as condescension, but it really sounded like a threat.

and the monkey was going to be away for another month.

i'm not usually so scaredy, but i hurried away after that, and that winter when i was told to watch myself, i got so mad i thought my tongue was going to turn black. i didn't say anything, though.

i have this one acquaintance i don't like very much, but i suppose he's an okay guy. i'm pretty attentive to him, and i'm a little ashamed of myself. i just called him and agreed to go to some party he's throwing where i will feel like a total idiot. he's someone i'd normally brush off--and not to be mean, he's just really very hard to be around--except he is also an Important Guy and i am also, apparently, a prostitute. countinuing to foster our unlikely acquaintanceship in the face of my dislike seems like roughly the same thing as biting my black tongue toward mister crotchety so that he wouldn't do anything un-neighborly to me while my protection was out of town. i don't think i would have guessed before i got here, but one of the lamest things about being an actor is also one of the lamest things about being female: i'm just usually a big loudmouth in an environment that requires a lean towards self-preservation.

the boyfriend got cast in some showcase. and i was, you know, "happy for him," and he was nice about my half-plastic smile. and i thought we were on the same page, so i let fly with something that was almost certainly a mistake, and now no matter through which filter i play the morning back to myself,

i did bad.

he's so patient and kind, which are good qualities for a lover to have except i am occasionally so tempted to use them for evil. it's like putting a water balloon in my hand.

it's just. man, he just got home. and we were just about to start all this good stuff. that no one wants to do by herself. and now it's going to be all, rehearsal, and tech on my birthday, and inside cast-jokes, and more drinks after the show, and i'll be home watching reruns of the simpsons, sending out five more headshots. and there are . . . responsibilities going on, and promises were made, at least sort of, and, yuck.

if i could relax my clench a little bit, i'm sure we'd both be happier. but then no one would be worried about anything, and we'd end up broke and eating catfood in our seventies.

he got cast in something and i practically gave him a crap sandwich. which is wrong, wrong, wrong. my potential to turn good things into puddles is, like, untold.

in other news, i feel like my secret crush just invited me to the prom.

i wanted to share this: a list of names favorite names i encountered during the old job's customer service duties:

burdette sciabbarrasi
sandy bot-miller
prudence grand
estelle terra-nova
hyacinth morgan
charla mustard-foote
karma gelck
patience prestridge
phoebe poos-benson
and
john lazor.

i am not a little worried that a few of these people are going to google themselves and find this list and think i'm mocking them; i don't mean to. i would gladly change my own name for some of the names on this list (poos-benson!).

i'd forgotten what it was like to work in software. the fridge at the new job is full of: cheese cubes, orange juice, diet coke, yogurt, beer. the cupboards: oreos, "soy crisps," peanuts, microwave popcorn, pringles . . . god, you name it. there's also a fruit bowl, and as i was enjoying a banana on friday, i took a look at its sticker and realized it was organic.

there's that one kind of bad breath that smells a lot like poop. i spent the summer after my freshman year in college at a "shakespeare festival" run by a "semi-professional" theatre company in my hometown. it was really a community theatre group that was at the beginning of a short, frustrated attempt at renaissance. they hired a bunch of seattle people for a few years before they eventually ran themselves into the ground, and everyone i knew who'd taken part was sort of sheepish about admitting the experience whenever it came up. the "festival" was pretty much the blaine, missouri of washington state.

i was playing lady anne to a c0rnish student's richard. he had a speech impediment and chronically horrendous breath. he developed a small crush on me and once offered to help me latch the strapless bra i wore underneath my lady anne evening gown (you cannot be surprised to hear that it was modern dress. at one point the lancasters broke in and ransacked the york stronghold looking for a 3.5 inch floppy disk). the breath was really puzzlingly awful. i saw him popping mints occasionally but it never helped. then a castmate told me that richard had been born without a stomach, and that one had been surgically constructed for him out of the end of his esophagus and the beginning of his small intestine. which is why his breath was so particularly bad: it was pretty much a straight shot from the sweet end of the digestive tract to the sour.

i ran into an acquaintance on the subway this week and was engaged in conversation from 181st to west 4th and the exact same shit breath was going on. i kept trying to steer the converstation towards subjects gastromnomic so that she might mention that she had no stomach, but she kept her cards close.

funny, though, how a smell will take you riiiiight back.

i've tried to avoid writing about the haircut, but i can no longer refrain. kids, it is so bad. it is actually two bad haircuts in one: a funny razor-ed bob on the top, with this mullet-like stringy fringe of longer hair underneath that sort of resembles seaweed. the whole thing has been thinned within an inch of its life. i used to have a couple of thick pig tails on either side of my head; now i can make one single dinky spray of hair on the back of my head, one that sort of resembles the ponytail you see on the heads of small dogs.

i'm contending with the salon about the fifty bucks it cost to look this bad. there have been plenty of times i've made a bad hair move--chosen unwisely, communicated badly--and taken my lumps. this one, however, was not my fault. i was clear and articulate. we agreed at the start that the general shape of the hair would remain the same, and that there would be no short layers. then, apparently, the stylist had a lobotomy while i was being shampooed. then, while she was putting the finishing touches on the travesty, she burned me with the hair dryer.

it is so lame to act like a bad haircut is a very large deal. i am trying to make it only a medium-sized deal. but i really do want to wear a bag on my head when i leave the house. if it wasn't summer, i'd be investigating wigs. and so help me, if this place does not see fit to hand me back fifty dollars, i am going to dispute the credit card charge and go toilet paper their salon.

the swedish chef used to end his theme song with that. i loved it.

i've been trying all day to compose something useable about sandra day o'connor, but everything sounds glib. she couldn't wait a few more years? justice rehnquist has a trach and a feeding tube and sylvia poggioli says when he speaks he sounds "like darth vader." and i hardly think they're going to be replaced with judges styled on the lovely ruth bader ginsburg.

yuck.

on the other hand, i did some reading, and did you know that there was once a chief justice named salmon?





p.s.: i just checked my referrals, and snowsuit pee fetish guy is back!