Four of the five interns here at Dixon Place have blogs (basterdpeople, kangaroosequins, and Lindsay). Kaycee, the one that doesn't, said:

"YESS!! I am the only non-nerd on the staff, wooo-hooo. I can't even keep my cellphone charged. sorry. I also am really keen on VHS tapes. I prefer them to dvd's.

"soon, the non-nerds will become the new nerds. no need to tell me. i already feel obsolete.

"just for the record since we're putting this on the record. I think cell phones are going to bring about an new incarnation of thought about capital, we have social capital, financial capital, and soon we'll have 'air capital'. A telephone call means nothing and everything now that we have cell phones. I hate cell phones. i hate cell phones. i'm waiting for a girl to call me back and she's not calling. i hate cell phones."

Ben Elton taught me “prevaricate”. Oh yes. Using it in conversation that one time was brilliant.

It went something like this (though not exactly like this, as Peter Tork would hope):

I was with Chris and Jack, yay, and their videographer. Before the show. The air conditioner was brought up. The night before, during commercial, Ellie said she knew how to get it to stop rattling. I asked her about it the next day, she said that she knew a guy who could come and fix it, that she’d look into it (which, by now we all know, means it will never get done).

So Chris and Jack said, “Ellie said she could fix it?”

I said, “She lied. Well no. she didn’t lie, she...” I looked for the right word and beautifully it came into my head. “She prevaricated.”

“She prevaricated!”

“She did! Oh, that’s so exciting, I just learned that word the other day and I got to use it, correctly at that!” They laughed and agreed on the coolness.

Met a guy the other day who said to me:

"I've seen you before, I don't know where. But I remember thinking, Oh, she looks pleasant. It could have been at a show, maybe you were just in the audience, and I noticed you. Whatever it was, I have your face in my mind filed under 'Nice Person'."

Last night I tech'd (though, technically, there wasn't much tech) Dixon Place's Veteran Series which featured Andy Horwitz (who's running for mayor) and Greg Walloch (who isn't but maybe should be running for mayor).

They were both great to work with, amazingly talented, and, above all, most importantly, to me anyway, funny as hell!

On behalf of the Queer-In-Theory Mostly-Asexual-In-Practice Ladies Auxiliary, I endorse Andy For Mayor!



Read Andy's account of the night (more pictures).
Greg's got a blog, too.

The devil sticks I ordered online came in the mail today. They are sweet. They're unlike other sets I've used, plus I'm wicked rusty, so it'll take a while, but I look forward to being a devil-stick bad-ass once again. ;)

Yesterday I told Adny (the fellow intern) that I was waiting for them, and he laughed. "What!" I mean, I know they're kinda cheesy, but come on. He told me how when he was in middle school in Bemidji Minnesota, they were really trendy for a while, and he reminisced about making and selling them and having hardcore juggling contests with his friends.

I don't remember them being trendy, not really. He said maybe it was a Bemidji thing. I said that I did remember that, shortly after I started doing them, I saw them around more often, and that after about a year I couldn't even buy them anymore. Which is how I got rusty. I had a propensity for breaking the control sticks, you see, and once my source ran out I had nothing. (The brand I started with, Spinmaster, doesn't even make them anymore.)

And that during that one year, it must have been 1995, I introduced them to a friend of mine and she bought her own set. She would bring them to school and other kids would ask her where she got them. This being the hey-day of the "poser", she'd say, "I'm not telling anyone that, because I don't want people to copy me." Anyone else see the irony?

Adny and I had fun yesterday goofing off. I inspired him to blog again but distracted him by dragging him into my Anthony Michael Hall obsession.

The darkening sky is threatening to put an end to my holiday. Gray clouds are gathering and literally falling, rushing to cover the remaining white bits. The seagulls are hectic, quickly flying willy nilly, rushing to greet with some preparation the impending storm.

Behind me are a plethora of school buses and high rises. In front of me, a plethora of water and sand. The boardwalk serves as a definable border between these two unlikely neighbors. I’ve never seen Coney Island look like this—the sky this dark, without the lights of the parks it looks even sketchier. It is losing its glow and spark and gaining a ghostly air.

I finally made it to Brighton Beach. That’s where I train’d in. Pretty much exactly like Astoria’s main streets only Russian. But I didn’t come for that, not really. Straight to the water, follow your nose. Hot sand, cold water, and the first time I’ve been able to breathe in a while. I didn’t eat at Moscow Restaurant but at a place right next to it. A waitress outside talked me into it. And sure enough, I’d been sitting there only a little while when a man came up to me and said something in Russian, something that sounded like a question. “Sorry?” Again, Russian. I think he said, “You don’t speak Russian?” shaking his head. “Sorry, no.” Off he went nodding.

Due to my hearing problem, a lot of times when I hear a different language, at first I think it’d English and that I just can’t hear it right. (This isn’t uncommon when people speak English.) The closer the cadence is to American English (or British English), the more time it takes to realize it isn’t English.

Tonight one of the dancers in one of the shows I tech'd was the spittin image of Colin Meloy (lead singer of The Decemberists)- hipster-nerd glasses and everything. Only thing was he was lighter-haired. His name was Colin. I'm serious. I just stared at him all night. He probably thought I was weird, but he never said anything or anything. So either I got away with it or he just thought, "Aw, cute, the techie has a crush on me, but I'm not interested so I won't say anything" or whatever.

When I introduced myself as Vee, his dance partner Erin asked if it was a nickname. I said yea. Colin said, "Do you know my roommate Jimmy?"

( Read more... )

*

Today I bought a hat for $10 on St. Mark's. I'd had my eye on it for a while. It's a black fedora with pink pinstripes.

On the 6 train riding home tonight, two men got onto the train and one of them was wearing pink trousers and a pink tie. I thought, my hat would look good with that outfit.

Not long after the train started moving again the man in pink said to his friend, "That hat would look good with my outfit." I smiled but said nothing.

( Read more... )

Decided to spend the entire day watching all of VH1's "I Love The 90s" series. Read: reliving the second half of my childhood.

Discovering the addictiveness of list shows. Friday night was spent watching Bravo TV's "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments".

Sometimes I feel like an archetype. Not usually, but very occasionally it will hit me. An isolated incident, or rather, a semi-isolated moment in time.

A placement: I'm in Birch. I'm in a college dorm. I am with a hipster from my era. We are "hanging out". Sitting around. Listening to music. Selected songs, he's having me hear. The aging youth, the student slacker, students well beyond our student years- for different reasons. But, both still stuck in time. Stuck somewhere in the 90s. Alternative grunge. Computers and rock music and obscure film. A captured moment of the Zeitgeist.

The course of a conversation with a stranger:

He says I’m civilized because I take off my shoes before curling up on the couch in the coffeeshop. Like Japanese restaurants—the traditional section. The Japanese wear masks when they are sick. We should do that. It’s not comfortable, but we would do it if was accepted or expected. We could decorate to make them more appealing—colors for kids. Kids should wear them. We get sick around them, it’s us, not them. Their systems are stronger. We get sick: not enough rest, and the chemicals we put in our bodies.

I hit a guy in the eye with a racquetball today! From like 5 feet and you know, I hit HARD. He pressed his hand to his eye, screamed "my eye!" repeatedly, ran out, and had to be taken away by the racquetball teacher... I felt awful and apologised profusely, but what's a girl to do? I saw him a bit later, at dinner, a big mittened hand holding a ziplock bag full of ice to his eye (and you know it's about 2 degrees outside...). Eek! I should probably not play racquetball ever again. Or else make sure everyone I play with signs a waiver and wears goggles and lots of padding. (This isn't the first time I've hit someone, but it's never been even close to this bad.)

I've written a lot whilst in Scotland (been here since 24 August). Some of it's interesting.

My First Weekend As A Bar Wench
On Journalling/Chronicling
Work Experience Rachel
"Nobody Becomes An Artist Unless They Have To"
Americans/ Politics/ Comfort
The Comfort Of Recognizable Character Traits
Being An American Bar Wench In Scotland Is Fun!

As a redheaded child, I was constantly taunted with "Carrot Top". I eventually figured out, wait, carrot tops are green! You know, the big leafy part. So that became my retort to the taunt.

Taunter: "Carrot Top!"
Me: "Carrot tops are GREEN!"
Taunter: "Er..."

Years later, here's me in university. Doing a very inspired improv scene in a theatre class, I'm playing a character that's arguing with another character, and it becomes a childlike, name-throwing, personal-attack fight.

My Scene Partner: "Carrot Top!"
Me: "Carrot tops are GREEN!"
My Scene Partner: (after a single moment's thought) "Carrot Bottom!"

A middle-aged man, surrounded by other middle-aged men and a few younger attractive twentysomething men.

Man: "Care for any of these boys?"
Me: "Er..."
Man: "Are you from Kirkcaldy?"
Me: "No, I'm American, actually."
He and those around him laugh, almost sinister.
Man: "So you're not local then?"
He and those around him laugh, definitely sinister.

Paul asked me if I felt more at home, what with all the Americans who'd come in for this wedding.

To be honest, no, I had to say. Maybe because they were Midwestern.

One of the last nights they were here, however, they did prove comforting. After an intense political/cultural discussion that could have easily turned argument if I didn't know how to shut my trap, I went to two of them in the other room and we talked about our sometimes frightening encounters with defensive, American-hating Scots. I vowed never to discuss anything even remotely political with anyone here ever again.