A Child Of Atom

The last time I partook of the particular magic that makes up a Disney theme park was 2004 while I was in Long Beach, CA for a theatre convention. Before that it had been sometime circa 1992 or 93 in Orlando. So I was very excited while in Florida to spend a day at Disney World and a day at Dinsey's Animal Kingdom, which I had never seen before.

It was an incredibly good time to visit the parks. We chose Wednesday to visit Disney, and Thursday for Animal Kingdom. Both days were slightly overcast, but still warm. Whether it was by virtue of being there in November or being there on a weekday I'm not sure, but the parks were utterly empty. We arrived at Disney very shortly after 9 and started riding immediately. We never encountered a line, and were able to walk in and straight onto rides at nearly every choice. In rapid succession we had made it all the way around the loop of the park and back to the front gates. We had ridden just about every single ride in the park and it was 11:30. So we decided to do what any normal person would do and do it all again. By the evening we had had an incredibly thorough Disney experience and had not waited in a line longer than 10 minutes.

Disney World has been open since 1971 (Disneyland opened in 1955) and there have been lots of changes to the various rides over the years, some for the better, some for the worse. For instance a lot has been made by various critics about the changes to "Pirates of the Caribbean" to make it more compatible with the movies. Davy Jones has been added to the beginning and Jack Sparrow has been added to several places in the course of the ride. Most of these are unobtrusive and don't really effect the ride. I will complain a bit that the animatronics on Jack are SO much better than the original animatronics that the originals suffer by comparison. They are much less alive looking when they stand so close to the new machines. I also grieve a little bit for the loss of the first section of the ride, the New Orleans bayou, that has now been replaced by the Davy Jones hologram and some of the haunted figures that used to be at the end of the ride have been moved up to the opening area. For riders the New Orleans area of the ride may have been slow, but one of the coolest parts of the ride was that there was an adjoining restaurant that had seating inside that area of the ride. Diners appeared to be having dinner of the veranda of a plantation in the bayou as the boats for the ride slipped past. That no longer exists unfortunately.

Some of the other attractions have also lost a little of their charm in the revisions. The worst offender of the lot was the "Enchanted Tiki Room" which used to be a charmingly cute show of animatronic birds and tiki gods but is now a brash mess starring Iago from Aladdin. Who at Disney was silly enough to think that ANYTHING had ever been improved by adding Gilbert Gottfried to it?

I'll admit from the standpoint of a designer Disney does a simply amazing job of creating sets and environments that establish an experience. They are capable of creating what seem to be perfect replicas of places, both real and fictional, even using such materials as concrete and cast resin that are resistant to wear and tear, but are dressed colored and painted to be almost any other material. I spent an inordinate amount of time during this most recent visit just looking at the walls and plants and walkways trying to discern how they were created or what I could take away to use on one of my own sets at some point.

Thursday's visit to Animal Kingdom was a bit more crowded and actually had to take advantage of the "Fast Pass" system of reserved seating on rides a few times, most namely on "Expedition Everest" the newest ride in the park centering around a doomed expedition that runs into the Yeti. I LOVED this ride! We went out of our way to ride it several times, and it was the last ride we hit before we left the parks for good. Though I'm not sure why a park that is centered around animal conservation and the discovery of species by children has a ride about a mythological beastie, it definitely was worth seeing. Since it is one of only three or four ride type attractions in the park it will certainly draw a lot of attention.

Animal Kingdom had tons of great atmospherics. The replicas of African and Asian towns around their respective areas were superb, especially Africa. This is a beautifully put together park.

With Michelle living in Orlando now I'll probably be headed back down there at several future points. She's not overly keen on visiting the parks, but hopefully I'll get the chance to visit some of the others again soon. I haven't visited EPCOT or MGM since that trip in the 90's and I'd love to see some of the changes that have occurred there.

Yesterday it was 85º outside. I had sweet tea with my lunch at a restaurant with no difficulties. There's Spanish Moss in the trees, and they haven't lost any leaves yet. It almost feels like home... almost. I'm in Orlando this week visiting BFE Michelle for a few days, (and working for her) and I'll be playing at a couple of the Disney Parks later in the week. Kevin is coincidentally in town, as is another friend who is performing at the Orlando Puppet Festival. Seems Orlando is the place to be these days. So, things may be a bit slow around here for a day or two while I have some fun out of town!

In another "Only in New York" moment this afternoon I witnessed one of the strangest exchanges I've ever seen. Sitting on the subway a stereotypically dressed black teenager sat down beside me. The train was just a little crowded and there was a fairly flamboyant gay guy standing in front of us. Both of them had their iPods out and were watching video of some sort. From the corner of my eye I tried to get a glimpse of what the black guy was watching, but I couldn't so I just went back to my book. He must have caught me trying to peek because he nudged me with his elbow and turned the iPod so that I could clearly see. There on the tiny screen was an orgy. He was watching porn. I just nodded and waved him off, like people living in the city learn to do with so many different people. Apparently though he wasn't satisfied with my dismissal. He reached up and tapped the arm of the guy in front of us, looking to share with him as well. When the gay guy looked at the screen he laughed and held up a finger in the motion for "wait a second." He fiddled with his won iPod for a bit until he found what he was looking for and then turned his own iPod to both of us (I couldn't pretend that I wasn't looking at this point) so that we could see the screen. There on his screen was a similar scene to the one he had been shown, only with all men. The black guy laughed and nodded his head and both of them went back to their own videos, satisfied with their exchange.

I repeat, only in NY.

This afternoon I went by a theatre where I've worked quite a few times, down in Tribeca, just at the edge of Chinatown. While I was down there I took the opportunity to swing by one of my new favorite eating places in town Province Chinese Canteen. Province is a very simple eatery with a clean, almost industrial look to the interior, located at the corner of Walker and Church. The food is as simple as the space, small-ish sandwiches made from steamed Chinese buns called mantou. The buns have either sesame or poppy seeds on them depending on what's inside. The fillings for the sandwiches are variations on sliced meats and some sort of topping. My personal favorite is the Short Rib and Kimchi which is incredibly full of flavor and just spicy enough. I usually also get one of their Braised Pork sandwiches which comes with fresh cucumber slices and cilantro. Somehow this sandwich manages to be both savory and fresh tasting. Their menu is small, only 5 or so sandwiches and some sides, but they usually have 5 or 6 more choices on the specials board. Today I decided to try the Angus Burger, which had a sauce on it that I can't remember. Another awesomely good sandwich. If you are in this neighborhood do yourself a favor and stop by this place, I promise you won't be disappointed by any of the choices. This is one of the things I love about the city. Here is a place that serves some of the best food I've had in a while that is cheaper and far fresher than any fast food that can be had. Every time I go by this theatre I will probably eat there.

Last Thursday Kevin passed along a couple tickets to the Second Stage production of Eric Bagosian's "subUrbia." This has been a favorite show of mine for a few years, primarily because it is high on my list of shows that I would want to design.

The show is just a bit dated at this point (It was originally produced in the mid 90's and is a bit tangled in the mire of that time period) so I was thrilled to find out that Bagosian himself had done some rewrites and edits to the script to bring it into a more current time frame. I really wanted this show to be good. Unfortunately I ended up being disappointed.

The cast was decent. It included two child-stars (Kieran Culkin and Gaby Hoffman) and several award winners and nominees, but the only real stand-out was Peter Scanavino as Tim, the disaffected former Naval Airman, and the de facto leader of the group of slackers that the show centers around. Whether he has a brilliant make-up artist, or just lives the lifestyle himself Scanavino certainly looks the part of a guy on a 3 day bender, and he carried the cast through the rest of the show. Whenever he was on stage he commanded the attention of the audience well above the rest. The others on stage worked to varying degrees of success, but none of them really managed to connect fully to their roles or the audience. Hoffman was especially lackluster and never seemed as if she belonged with the rest of the cast. Her character, Sooze, is the one bright spot in the show, the one character with the ambition and possibility to move beyond the situations of the town they live in. Through her we should be able to see in sharp relief the opportunities that everyone else is allowing to slip past. Instead she came off as spoiled, and snobbish, placing herself above it all without motivation.

The biggest problem I had with the show was the set. The design opportunity of this show, the thing that appeals to me, is that it is an absolutely real place, that has to portrayed in that way. The grounding reality of the show is in it's setting. The entire show takes place in the parking lot of a suburban convenience store and includes the interior of the store, as well as the roof, dumpsters, and some of the surrounding details. Scenic designer Richard Hoover did a solid job of creating the reality of the space, and I applaud what he managed, but it was also part of the ultimate downfall of the play. Hoover chose to present the entire front of the store relatively flat to the audience. His mistake came in presenting far too much of the interior. The depth of the store interior ate a LOT of stage space. 90% of the play takes place outside the store and while it was visually appealing to have the storefront represented so well it ultimately left too little room for the action and forced the actors into a small lane of space that really only allowed for movement parallel to the seating. The limited movement in the limited space (coupled with the limited acting) left the whole show feeling shallow. This was a textbook example of the design impeding the show. I'm not sure if a deeper design, with more acting space could have saved the whole thing, but it certainly couldn't have hurt it.

In all I'd say B-, which depresses me. There's potential here that they missed.

There's a few things I love about New York more than I can express. One of them is that, as a gay man I'm fairly invisible. Most big cities provide that opportunity. Dan Savage very frequently gives that advice to his young gay readers who are struggling with their identity in a small town: "Move to the Big City." And it's true. Being gay here is easier. The population here is fairly inured against us. Gay people are ubiquitous in the big city, and gay friendly people are even more populous. In the areas of Chelsea, and the Village especially seeing gay couple holding hands, or kissing is just as common as seeing straight couples. That ability, to be out even while out in public is incredibly freeing and affirming, and it's spreading. As the years progress, and NYC gentrifies the area where gay couples can be comfortable is spreading. For the bold, spearheading the change, there's not really anywhere on Manhattan that isn't safe.

For a small town boy from the south who grew up in a vastly different atmosphere I feel sort of conflicted about all this. On the one hand there is nothing quite like being out and seeing acceptance and diversity displayed openly on the streets instead of just talked about. I can't help but being excited, and thrilled by it, but at the same time, that oppressed small town boy kicks into gear in the back of my head. Seeing two men holding hands makes me at once happy and scared.

When I'm dating I want to be part of that excitement. I live in a city that affords me the opportunity to hold hands with my boyfriend, and to walk down the street with him in a safe manner. I want to do those things. I want to kiss him goodbye on the subway platform, or in front of his apartment. Luckily Kid Flash is open to those possibilities. Last Friday after leaving Roller Derby and looking for some food he proudly held my hand. In the bar where we ended up, neither of us was shy about standing with our hand in the small of the other's back, or touching the other's knee at the bar. This morning after having breakfast he kissed me quickly on the street outside the entrance to the subway as we parted. All of this was exciting beyond measure. Even after being here for several years and dating several people that's a feeling that has not gone away. At the same time I have to admit that my fear response was there as well. Friday night was not a problem, it was dark, the neighborhood we were in is fairly liberal and nice. I didn't really feel all that uncomfortable, but there was still a small voice in the back of my mind telling me to watch around me, pay attention to who was nearby. This morning was a bit worse, it was daylight, we were in a much less gentrified neighborhood, and kissing ups the ante quite a bit from just holding hands. I wanted that kiss, and I wanted to be as comfortable receiving it as Kid Flash was giving it. I tried to keep that small war in my mind to a minimum, but it was hard.

The good news is, of course, that I have someone who is giving me the opportunity to feel all this, and is willing to kiss me and hold my hand, either in public or out.

I assume that since this is based on 1990 Census data and Cully is not technically my first name they just missed me, but still... nice to know I'm unique.

At 2:10:18 this morning (US Atlantic time) a visitor from Queensland, Brisbane, Australia became the 25,000th visitor to this site! Thanks to everyone who visits and who has supported me and this blog!

Okay... wow. Last night I had the opportunity to see a preview of Evil Dead: The Musical. I'll say that there are two entertainment trends that I am not fond of: movie musicals, and tongue in cheek remakes. Movie musicals are the Broadway equivalent of making a TV show into a movie. After "The Producers" every producer in New York started mining Blockbuster looking for something they could put onstage. Some have been good ("Holy Grail") some have been bad ("Dirty Rotten Scoundrels") and some have only been fair ("The Wedding Singer"), but it just seems to me that there have to be better sources. Speaking of TV shows going to the silver screen why do they all essentially make fun of the show they are emulating? Granted some are worthy of mockery like "The Dukes of Hazard" but I'd have much rather seen a solid romantic comedy based on "Bewitched" than what we got. Evil Dead falls squarely into both of these pet peeves, so how does it fare? Not well frankly.

It's fun, don't get me wrong. And it has moments of brilliance. There are some pure laughs to be had, and some fun numbers, but in the end it was all a little flat. My first complaint is that the show doesn't seem to be sure of what it is mocking exactly. At times it is certainly poking holes in the source material, and at other times it attacks horror movies as a genre, but it also takes some serious shots at musical theatre convention. The audience that came to see this show because of the first part of the title (Evil Dead) is not going to get the musical theatre jokes, and the audience that came for the second part (The Musical) might be alienated by the blood and geek based humor.

Scattered through all that though are some great touches. The zombie masks are fantastic and the transformations are often seamless. The first transformation in fact was so full of theatre magic that I am still not 100% sure how they pulled it off. The rest of the special effects fall into one of two categories: either they are magical and fascinating, or they are played for laughs. One headless zombie is obviously a walking joke, while at the same time there are moments like a scalping that are enthralling. The jokes also seem to go to either extreme, overplayed, or understated. The understated humor frankly works the best. Ryan Ward as Ash plays this show as if he is the only sane person onstage. He only breaks the fourth wall and convention when his character runs up against some aspect of the plot that is obviously far fetched or against logic. On the other hand Darryl Winslow as Jake beats every line he is given with a stick trying to get every ounce of comedy he can out of it. In the end his performance suffers. Winslow doesn't trust the script to carry him the way that Ward does.

The show doesn't disappoint in some aspects it hits all the high points of the movie ("Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.") and it certainly delivers on it's promise of blood and gore. Officially the first three rows are the "splatter zone" where the seats are covered in plastic, and you probably should be too, but unofficially members of my party were hit by spraying blood as far back as the 7th row.

I'd say that if you are a rabid fan of the movie, or you can enjoy an evening of fairly mindless entertainment with some blood thrown in then you should go. If you are in any way looking for off-kilter greatness then you're going to be a bit disappointed.

In the past week I have purchased: new oven mitts, a rug for the kitchen, a new trash can for the bathroom, new tea towels, a bread box, and some picture frames so that I can decorate the bathroom (finally).

I have a desire to purchase: mixing bowls, a new rug for the bathroom, more frames and an ironing board.

Why am I in a nesting phase?

You've got a small problem here. Several times over the past year or two I've gone to one of your movies and, as most movie goers do, I watched the trailers, hoping to catch a glimpse of what I'd be seeing next. Most of the trailers were greeted by indifference, or a big "Nope" on my part, but a few of them were interesting enough to get me back into the theatre, and to take another $10.75 from pocket. Which I assume was your goal.

Here's where the problem comes in. Why do you keep making trailers for movies that don't exist?

You made a great movie about a hispanic woman and her daughter and their struggle to fit into American society. It was charming, and had a lot to say about class struggle and cultural assimilationism. It had a great cast, who gave solid performances. Unfortunately you called it Spanglish and made a trailer for it that seemed like it was about a nutty caucasian family going through a divorce scare. And it was, I suppose, but that was by far the least interesting part of the movie. It was a subplot that existed mainly as a foil for the hispanic family, and the best comedy in the film occurred at the intersection of the two plots. Did you think that it would be difficult to sell a movie starring hispanics to a white audience, or what?

I saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose expecting a standard horror movie, probably not very good, since most horror movie are not very good these days, but passable entertainment close to Halloween. That's what I was expecting from the trailers at least. Somehow, as I was watching the movie, it morphed into a courtroom drama with supernatural overtones. How'd that happen? Did you realize that even Laura Linney couldn't carry a plot that dry so you gave us the trailer for the movie you wished you had instead? You did the same thing with An American Haunting which the trailers would have had us believe was an exploration of the legend of one of the greatest ghost stories from American history. Instead I was delivered what amounted to a debunking of the legend, which was not nearly as satisfying as it could have been. Granted, it was a bad movie, so maybe you did the best with the materials you had to work with, but you could have at least been honest with us about where the movie was headed.

Tonight you did it again. I saw Man of the Year, expecting something along the lines of Dave, where the film makers explored the concept of a non-politico suddenly thrust into a political situation. Instead I got a watered down political thriller that couldn't make up it's mind whether it wanted to be The Net or a political comedy like The American President. This movie had the potential to skewer some of the current political mess that we are in, and comedically explore the path that our elected leaders have chosen to follow of late. It could have ranked with Bulworth or Wag the Dog as one of the best political comedies ever. The trailers made it look like it would. Robin Williams appeared to be making a return to comedic glory, in a role that was tailor made for him. Laura Linney looked to be playing his love interest in the trailer, when in reality they share maybe 10 minutes of screen time. There is an audience for the movie that you made the trailer for, and that audience is not going to like the movie you actually made. I know, because I didn't. The smart political comedy that I was there to see ended about half an hour into the movie when Linney's plot kicked into high gear and I was treated to warmed over plot rejects from Enemy of the State.

Now I know that asking for honesty in advertising is like asking for honesty in politics, but wouldn't all be better served by trailers that actually reflect the plot of the movie being screened? I won't go as far as to ask for trailers that don't fool me into thinking some pile of mess will actually be funny or good, but is this really too much to ask for? I'd be much happier and feel far less cheated if my $10.75 went where I thought it was going, good or bad. Voting with your dollars is hard to do when the packaging says apples, but contains oranges.

Oh yeah... and in the crowd at the derby? Ethan Zohn, winner of Survivor:Africa, who you might remember was part of this list.

Damnit, Ethan! Why did you have to wait until I was dating someone I liked to show up?

I've never really been the organized sports type. For the most part I've always found the idea of spending time watching grown men chase little balls around to be... incredibly boring. To say the least. On very rare occasions I've gotten caught up in a sporting event, and they are usually small scale, local teams, or teams of friends. Maybe it's the scale of organized sports that turns me off... I dunno.

Last night though... last night Kid Flash took me to something new: Roller Derby. Now HERE'S a port I can get behind. Small teams of local girls, obviously playing for the love of sport, not money, in a fast paced and exciting game that is not burdened down with esoteric rules. (No lengthy discussions of "in-field flies here.)

Last night was the Queens of Pain vs. the Bronx Gridlock. I'll grant that the first few "jams" (which is what they call the plays) I was completely lost. I was still trying to get a handle on the rules, how to follow the action, who to pay most attention to, things like that. Kid Flash was very handy at helping me understand, and very patiently explained it to me several times. He kept me up on strategy and gave me the histories of every player, pointing out their playing styles, what they are best at, where they are weak, (he's really into it and has been at every bout this season). About half-time I had gotten a pretty good hold on what was going on, and how the game was played. It didn't take long for me to have chosen a team (the Gridlock) and even had favorite players (Blissy Sadistick and Pop Rox) and was feeling the excitement of the crowd. Cheering, stamping my feet, and reacting with the crowd is something I'm really not used to being caught up in, but there I was, cheering, stamping my feet and reacting with the crowd. This game is exciting! The tongue in cheek nature of the players, with character names (my fave name is "Brigitte Bar-Ho") and in some cases costume bits like wigs, fuzzy ears, and face make-up added to the fun too. The player's ability to be deadly serious in the rink and at the same time playful and edgy made the whole thing for me before the game started, and then after things got really underway the excitement of the action and the pace of the game kept me hooked. If all sports were played like this I might actually end up watching ESPN now and then.

In a couple weeks Kid Flash's best friend will be playing and I can't wait! I wish I had discovered this earlier in the year so that I could have followed the whole season, especially since there are only two games left at this point, but there's always next year.

My apologies to anyone who reads this blog through a feed, or an RSS subscription. I've been going back and editing posts to add tags, which is a new feature in Blogger, and it never occurred to me that all of these would be popping up on the feeds again as new posts! I've edited almost 300 posts in the past few weeks! I'm so sorry!

Does this sound like you?

1) You are in New York City
2) You enjoy one or more of the following things:
a) Cabaret performances
b) Comedy centering around either washed up starlets, broadway in-jokes or gay sex
c) Two bitchy queens bickering onstage
3) You are free next Monday night

If that sounds like a description of you then I cannot more highly recommend anything to do to fill your Monday evening than going to see Cake Returns at the Duplex, starring Vinnie Costa and Tom Privitere. (On the full disclosure front Vinnie is a friend of mine, and one of the people that I regularly play geeky card games with.) The show is great fun, including lots of really funny Broadway style songs, and lots of bickering and play fighting between Vinnie and Tom. I had great fun at tonight's performance. The Duplex is hinting around that they may want Tom and Vinnie to extend the run beyond the planned two performances, so get in there next week and support them!

After meeting his friends for breakfast on Sunday Kid Flash and I decided that we would hit some of the sites included in Open House New York. Open House New York is a two day event where buildings, parks, and other sites all over the five boroughs are opened to the public for tours. Most of these sites are normally closed, or charge admission to gain access, but for this one weekend they are open to anyone who cares to come and stand in line long enough. We chose a handfull of places to try and visit, but because we got a late start we were eventually only able to make it to two of them.

The first was The High Bridge Water Tower. This tower on the east side of Manhattan was formerly part of the Croton Reservoir system and had a water tower on the top of it that helped service the water needs of northern Manhattan. The water tank burned in the 80's but it has been replaced by an observation deck that overlooks all of northern Manhattan, part of Queens, and part of the Bronx. From the height of the tower you can see 9 or 10 of the bridges that cross onto Manhattan, including the George Washington. The restoration of the tower is amazing, and is part of a larger restoration project in the works for that area that will include the High Bridge. High Bridge was partially a pipeline from the reservoir, and partially a pedestrian bridge between Manhattan and the Bronx. I'll be excited to see that project complete, it was a great area and High Bridge was cool. I'd love to walk across it. Anyway...

There was a moderate line formed by the time we got there, but it ended up only being about 45 minutes long. After that there was a climb to the top of the tower. Waiting at the top was a park ranger who gave a brief talk on the history of the place, and tried his best to explain what had gone on in the tower, and answer our question. I say tried because there was a guy there who was obviously an engineer or something and kept asking questions about the reservoir system and how the water was pumped to the top of the tower, etc. The poor ranger tried his best but just wasn't up the task of the physics of the place. It was obvious during the climb that this place wasn't typically open to the public. Some of the hand railing was missing, and the floor boards were uneven in places. Still it was incredibly exciting to see this space. Even with the park rangers and the lines it had the air of having snuck in somewhere forbidden, but really cool. Part of the point of this whole thing I guess.

The views from there were amazing. Kid Flash was able to point out the building he works in across the river, we could both see our neighborhoods. The GWB from that angle was also awesomely cool.

After that we realized that we were running really late and so we prioritized which place from our list we thought we might be able to get to in time. The decision was to head over to Roosevelt Island and to try and see the Octagon Lighthouse. Neither of us had ever been to Roosevelt Island, so it seemed like the best choice.

We got to The Octagon just as they were letting the last group in. The Octagon was originally built as part of an insane asylum, and is the last standing part of that structure. It's a beautiful building, and probably would have been incredible to see 20 years ago, unfortunately it has been bought and incorporated into a luxury apartment complex. The portion that we were allowed to see is now the lobby of that complex, including the gym, and the play room. It's a great renovation, and I'm sure the apartments are beautiful as well, but looking at the photos of the wrought iron spiral staircase that once dominated the space (in place of the very modern one I photographed here) made me sad for what was lost. Still cool to see though.

Roosevelt Island itself was bizarre. The entire island is dominated by high rise apartment buildings, and by virtue of it's placement in the East River directly between Manhattan and Brooklyn I'm sure the apartments are quite pricey. There are a few dots here and there of older, cooler structures, but the apartment buildings really do provide the only visual cues about the island. The overly homogenized sameness of all the buildings lends the place a highly artificial quality that is eerie in a way. The lack of street traffic (most of the island is off limit to cars) as well as foot traffic left the place feeling pretty vacant. Kid Flash also observed a distinct lack of retail spaces in the places where you'd normally expect them to be in NYC. The whole thing added together meant that the island, while part of New York was VERY distinct from it, and different. It was a fun discovery, but not a place that I think I'd want to go to on a regular basis.

Next year I'll be looking to do this again, but with some better planning. There were some really tempting places on the list of available sites that I'd love to spend a few minutes in.

Okay... so things are going well enough on the romantic front that I've decided that a nickname for blogging purposes is probably in order. And so... Kid Flash it is. (He's a runner... I'm a geek... what can I say.)

My sister and I used to make this recipe on a nearly daily basis. I was so excited when she called me last week to say that she had come into possession of a copy of it again. Now officially these are called "No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies." We always called them "Dookie Cookies" for.... well... if you make the recipe you'll see the fairly obvious reason. We never bothered actually spooning the mixture out into cookie sheets and making actual cookies, instead we preferred just to eat it with a spoon directly from a bowl. But then like most kids I always did prefer the pre-cooked form of most sweets to the final form that they were supposed to be in. Regardless, it's a tasty recipe and I can't wait to try it again.

2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 cups oatmeal
Waxed paper

In a heavy saucepan bring to a boil, the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk. Let boil for 1 minute then add peanut butter, vanilla and oatmeal. On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the teaspoonfuls, until cooled and hardened.

It's happened a half dozen times in the last few weeks: about 10 or 11 o'clock someone in a nearby apartment begins playing an electric guitar. They never play for very long, and it isn't wild or loud, and I can never recognize a song. It's just 10 minutes or so of improvisational playing with a bluesy sound.

I love it.

Normally the NYC sounds drifting in from the street below me annoy me. The cars with too loud music. The old men playing dominos. The hoochie girls arguing over some boy. They annoy me, and keep me awake, and make me wonder how much training I'd need to use a sniper rifle from my window.

But this is different.

I've never made it secret that guys playing instruments is just about the hottest thing ever. And guitar playing is just plain out aural sex. In my mind the mystery guitar player is tall and thin and lithe with muscular forearms covered in blonde hair. He's sitting up in that apartment somewhere on a milk crate in worn cotton boxers and a white v-neck t-shirt, barefoot, with a beer on the floor beside him. (Given the demographic of my neighborhood this is probably far from true, but allow me my fantasies, please.)

The first few times I heard it it was just an anomaly, one of those NYC things that happens now and then. But I didn't hear him last night, and I actually wondered about him. Somehow, this random stranger I've never even seen has become a part of my daily life, which definitely IS one of those NYC things that happens now and then, and that makes me happy.

Because I use the word "atom" in my blog title I often get hits from search queries that are obviously designed to locate something related to science. It distresses me a little that in the past week I've had nearly a dozen hits searching on the phrase "quarts in an atom."

Just a hint... if you arrived here from a similar search they are called "quarKs" not "quarTs" and you should be looking here or here. Good luck!

Now for those of you who have been arriving here with various search strings involving the word "child...." well, there IS no help for you.

In roughly chronological order...

1. Marathons and running
2. Presidents who can speak clearly
3. Lindsay Lohan's breasts
4. Vegetarianism
5. The Baby Sitters Club
6. V.C. Andrews
7. Harry Potter
8. Robert Jordan
9. Mercedes Lackey
10. The relative merits of reading or not reading overly popular books
11. The Da Vinci Code
12. My old neighborhood
13. Apartment prices in NYC and other parts of the world
14. Geocaching
15. How to read a GPS
16. How starlings came to America
17. Inwood Park vs. Central Park
18. Mormonism
19. How to tell an accordion from a concertina
20. Lawrence Welk
21. Getting into museums for free
22. What fear feels like
23. Ren Faires
24. Badly painted murals
25. Zoos and zoo psychosis
26. Family
27. Prams
28. Collections you never intended to start
29. If more people would be better at math if teachers were better
30. Choosing underwear for the day
31. Naps
32. Scars
33. Kissing technique
34. Best friends

Oh... and what to do next time.

Everyone who has ever worked in theatre can watch the movie Waiting for Guffman and recognize some part of themselves, or of someone they have worked with or for in the past. (For the uninitiated Guffman is a hilarious mockumentary about a small town putting on a play about their history.) The saddest part is that doing theatre out in the "real world" away from New York or Chicago, or Boston where theatre is frequently performed, is an awful lot like being in Guffman. The people don't really understand what it takes to mount a production sometimes. The audience may not fully get the conceptualization of the idea. But I have to say... it's not all bad.

My current situation is this: I'm working in a TINY town in Connecticut, designing an opera. The company is great, has a great reputation among the people in the area and has resources that I would kill for in the city. The budget is great, in fact I am so used to having smaller budgets and producing shows in the city that I am hard pressed to imagine how I'd ever spend the budget they gave me without hiring an entire phalanx of carpenters, or sending the set out to a shop to be built. The people are incredibly nice. I am staying with a patron of the theatre who owns a largish house, and has been gracious enough to allow the opera to house me there. In fact all of the singers and tech crew are staying with various patrons around the city, as well as borrowing cars from them in many cases. The town though, is so small that everyone here knows who we are.

The town is a small tourist community, right on the ocean. It is situated on a peninsula about three blocks wide and twenty blocks or so long. It's a lovely historic community where every house was built before the revolution, and if you tore up the sidewalks and street paving it would probably look about the same ass it did back then. During the summer I imagine that the place is teeming with tourists, but now there's just the locals, and the people working for the opera. Twice now I've been recognized as being "Not One Of Us" and asked about the production. The full time residents of the town are all, it seems, fairly wealthy, as you'd have to be to live in houses like this and a town like this. One of the benefits of this is that they all have the latest tech gadgetry and there are open wireless networks all over the place, which allows me to post here, while sitting in a gazebo on the edge of the ocean watching the boats rock in the harbor. A fringe benefit of small town theatre that I don't often get, I'll admit.

The theatre was kind enough to hire me a carpenter to help with the build. He's been amazing, but since he's a real carpenter, used to building cabinetry, and has never done theatrical carpentry before it took me a while to convince him that I didn't need things to be measured in 64ths of inches.

The patrons have also been very generous with their belongings. A few days ago I spent the afternoon going to various homes and looking through their furniture to see if there was anything that I needed to borrow for the show. "Oh, you need a 19th century dressing screen? What color? I have three." Never have I had such a wealth of antiques available that people were wiling to allow me to put on stage.

I have three more days of sitting in parks to check my email, and building theatre in Small Town, USA, then it's back to reality in the big city and back to doing theatre the way I've grown used to doing it: cheaply, with unskilled volunteer help, and almost no resources. Sounds like fun, huh?

One of the worst things that happens to me as a freelancer is that I occasionally lose work because I already have work. That was the situation today. A theatre that I have worked for quite a bit in the past called me to check my availability. They usually have their schedule down to within an inch of its life so I was expecting that the work would be for October or November, but today that wasn't the case. They need a design for a show that went into rehearsal... yesterday! Since I am out of town for the next 6 days they regrettably said that they would probably have to look elsewhere, but that they would look at the schedule and see if it would be possible. I extended the only solution that I have, which would be for me to take a train back to the city on Saturday to meet with the director, since I have Sunday off here. It remains to be seen if that will happen. The frustration of knowing that there is a job going undone (by me at least), because I am already working elsewhere is killing me!

Click here and go order this books. (Just trust me, it will only cost you $1.54 if you buy it used!)

Sometimes I just feel like reading something fluffy, and sometimes I just feel like reading something with gay protagonists (do you know how tired I get of reading about straight romances? I mean... really... I can sympathize only SO much). And sometimes I just feel like reading both. That quest led me here. After reading the back of the book (A high school jock and nerd fall in love senior year...) I was expecting a light romp without much substance and maybe a few salacious chapters to make me blush on the subway. What I got was a great romantic comedy that had me alternatively laughing and crying (I hate crying when I read on the subway).

The story is told through diary excerpts, inter-office memos, emails, lists, court transcripts and more. It really gets moving in chapter two when the plot jumps forward 20 years to find the two boys both living happy lives on separate coasts, until one of them decides to change all that. The result is comparable to "Forget Paris" or "My Best Friend's Wedding" and the best of cinematic romantic comedy.

If you've ever wondered what happened to your first true love, or if you ever had a first true love, then this is the book for you. If you've ever travelled even a few hours to show up on the doorstep of your first true love (which I have and don't really recommend unless you ARE a character in a book) then this book is REALLY for you.

Now my biggest problem is that the book that was supposed to last me through my train ride to Connecticut (to work on the opera) has in actuality lasted me less than two days and has left me bookless for my journey. The good news is that I have a new favorite book to re-read whenever I'm feeling depressed or lonely.

I loved it so much in fact that I just ordered it for BFE Michelle, and though he doesn't know it yet Mark will be reading it this week. (Let's see how a straight guy feels about being on the other side of my romance coin! Ha!)

Every family has a way of making it. Everyone has their preferred method. Their perfect amount of sugar. Just the right number of tea bags. Here's mine:

First: Lipton Tea bags. This is important. None of that Tetley bullshit. Not the "cold brew" kind (more on that in a minute). And none of those single tea bags that are supposed to make whole pitchers. You'll need 8 tea bags.

Second: Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil. Now... do I measure out two quarts? No, of course not. I fill my medium sized pot, (and yes I only have one medium sized pot, I'm not that gay) about halfway. I'm guessing that it's about two quarts. It's important that the water be boiling before you put the tea bags in. I hope it goes without saying but pull all the little papers tags off the tea bags. Some people go to the trouble of tying all the strings together so that the bags make a little bundle... I find this unnecessary but if you're feeling bored while you are waiting for the water to boil, go ahead. After the water boils, drop the tea bags in. You can drop the heat a bit, but keep the water at a boil.

A note about so called "cold brews:" Someone came up with the brilliant notion off dropping several tea bags into a cold pitcher of water and letting it "steep" for a long period. This, along with "sun tea" has to be some weird Yankee method of making iced tea. The resulting tea is weak, and flavorless, and has no place on the table of a southern home. Avoid it!

Third: In a gallon sized pitcher place 1 cup of sugar. One. ONE! I know people who put up to three cups of sugar in a gallon of tea. That's overkill. We're making a beverage here, not some sort of iced tea syrup.

Fourth: Here's where the real art comes in. I prefer a nice dark tea. Some people prefer a lighter tea. I usually let my tea boil for 3 minutes or so. Up to 5. The tea should be a deep mahogany color in the pot, in it's undiluted form.

Fifth: Pour the hot tea into the pitcher with the sugar. Use a spoon to keep the bags from falling into the pitcher. Gently squeeze the remaining tea out of the bags. Be careful not to rip or burst one of the tea bags or you'll end up with tea leaves in your tea. Stir the hot tea and sugar allowing the sugar to dissolve completely.

Sixth: Fill pitcher with cold water, stir, and refrigerate. The resultant tea should be a dark red-brown.

Seventh: Enjoy!

Advanced Preparations: Fresh lemon is a time honored tradition to southern iced tea, as is a mint leaf as a garnish. Either are acceptable. Raspberries are to be avoided. They do not grow in the south and are not an acceptable ingredient. Raspberries are a leftover holdout from the 90's. Remember when everything came in a raspberry flavor? If you are simply dying for a berry flavor go with blackberries. Lipton makes a variety of flavored black teas. Mint, blackberry, orange spice, or honey lemon would make decent additions to southern style sweet tea. Simply replace on or two of the tea bags with the flavored type, depending on how strong a flavor you desire. One is usually enough for me. Do NOT be fooled by Lipton's raspberry flavor. Ignore it. Every company makes mistakes. For further proof of their mistakes check the mixes and powders that they also make. Avoid these at all cost.

Enjoy your tea, and if you are not normally an iced tea drinker but you try it based on my instructions, let me know!

Yesterday afternoon on the way to my weekly VS. card game I decided to swing by a public plaza in the area and check out a geocache, I looked for one earlier this week in a park near my neighborhood but couldn't find it. This one though was in a city street area rather than a wooded area. The truth is I didn't even need my GPS unit, which might be "cheating" but I figured it would attract more attention seeing me stumbling around looking at a bright yellow hand held device than it would for me to just look at the map and figure out where I was headed. To be in the public and a highly visible area it was pretty ingeniously hidden tucked behind a metal post and held up with magnets. The plaza itself was tucked between a couple buildings, one of those great NYC places that you'd only ever really know about if you lived or worked in the neighborhood and looked in just the right direction as you walked by.

I'm surprised by how many caches there are in Manhattan really. Several dozen, and most of them hidden in very public areas, not in the parks or the few wild areas as I expected. It's a different style of geocaching than what I was doing this summer, but fun in its own way. It's weird sometimes to think of all the things in the city, in the world really, that you might walk by every day and be completely unaware of because you just didn't know where to look.

At this point I am figuring that the job in PA is a no-go. I'm not sure why, but since I should be several days into the design period at this point and I'm not... well... one has to assume. So, my fabulous several months of not having to worry about job hunting won't be quite as long as I believed. On the plus side finding work right now doesn't seem to be a problem. For instance I spent the last few days in Brooklyn painting miniature buildings for the set of this movie. It's been quite fun actually as it combines two of my favorite things- painting distressed materials and model making. There's a good ten feet of buildings, both sides of the street with a lot of detail. The movie is a stop-motion animation piece so the cameras and the lenses are tiny and will pick up every little piece of information. I can't wait to see! The rest of this week will be spent doing the exact opposite and making giant or oversized replicas of everything from a powder box to a milk carton to a bog of cotton balls. All of this has to be built to the scale of a mouse. Again, kind of fun, don'tcha think?

Several of you have emailed to say that you are having trouble leaving comments for me. Here's the deal: Blogger has been sold to Google. Google has added some new features that you can only use if you merge your Blogger account with your Google account. I have done that.

Here's the wrinkle though: people who have not upgraded their Blogger accounts cannot post comments on blogs that have been upgraded, and vice versa. Blogger has added the option of logging in as "Other" to the comments box so that you can still comment, and you can link your comment to your blog.

So if you are a Blogger user who has not upgraded please use the "Other" option to leave comments for me until Blogger gets all this ironed out! Thanks!

You may have noticed that I've changed templates... well... Blogger changed so I had to as well. Blogger was recently purchased by Google and implemented some nifty new features that I wanted to take advantage of. (Mainly the subject labels) In order to do that I had to change to one of their new templates. The result has been a bit rocky and I apologize for any weirdness you may have experienced. First the flash based flickr badge no longer works, so I had to switch to the far less cool html one that now graces my sidebar. Then I freaked out because my hit counter dropped to almost zero for the last two days until I realized that switching templates stripped out the code for the counter. Today I was looking at some old posts and discovered that one of the new features (backtracking–which shows you if anyone has linked to a specific post) works fine for the current posts but causes the old posts to splash up an html warning, (at least in Safari, the browser I use). If there are any other bugs that I'm not seeing in some other browser please let me know so I can work it out for all our sakes! In the coming days I'll be doing some more site maintenance shifting the stock html of the template into something a nit more... me.

Two pieces of subway sketching new for you:

ITEM! With my return to the city that means a return to sketching, (Finally!!) so look for some new sketches in the next day or two!

ITEM! Earlier this summer I received an email from a gallery in Houston inquiring to see if I would be interested in doing a showing of the sketches. A few days ago it was confirmed that in December the Xnihilo Gallery will be hosting an exhibit of my subway sketches. So if you are in Houston come and see me! I'll be there in person for the opening. The show itself will be up until early January (more specific dates when I know them).

Here I am. In my own bed. In my own apartment. Under my own sheets. I'm incredibly happy to be home, but I'll admit that it's weird. Waiting on the platform for the subway today seemed... odd. As if I was a tourist or something. Part of was that I wasn't wearing my "city drag." My ipod was at home uncharged. My messenger bag was in my apartment full of books I carried home from the forest today. My cell phone was also at home, forgotten because I am out of the habit of needing it after 3 months with no service. On the subway I had no book to read, no book to sketch in, no ipod to listen to... it was an alien experience. I was my summer stock self in my real life world and the fit wasn't right. Tomorrow I go back to the regular world checking for keys, wallet, ipod, cell phone, metro card before I step foot outside the house. Messenger bag full of pens and books over my shoulder. I have a life full of errands to run, and work to catch up on.

I'm so happy to be home.

Okay... I know it's too small. I know it would be impractical. I know that I'd have to move somewhere where I had the land to put it up... but how cool would it be to live here?

Today marks one week until I leave the forest for the last (?) time and return to my life in the city. I'm SERIOUSLY looking forward to it in case none of you could tell. Life here has been good, and I've done some good work while I was here this year but I lost some serious momentum when the TD who had been here for most of the season left. The last two shows frustrated me just a touch because the set should be massive but with my extremely limited stage space I wasn't able to achieve that. Maybe in the end that was okay since both shows are about family relations and the stresses of family relations so having them (literally) on top of each other might be an appropriate statement, who knows.

The end of the season means that the resident company, the group of younger actors who formed the chorus for the musicals, are gone. The theatre is empty. There's no one at lunch or dinner. Things are much like they were in the first week when no one was here but technicians. That also means that there is no one here to wait tables or work at the cabaret, (the post show song and dance presentation in the bar at the theatre). So, tonight I have my first shift waiting tables in the cabaret. I've worked in the kitchen of the cabaret before, but never waiting tables. I'm sort of looking forward to it. I haven't waited tables in quite a while. Plus I hope to make enough money to pay for my rental car trip home!

After two days of calendar juggling and phone calls between three different theatres and producers I am several steps closer to confirming work for the next few months. This is an exciting process for me. Not too long ago I was convinced that the next year was going to be a rough one and that I'd end up temping or worse in the coming months in order to make things happen financially. One of the two jobs that I spoke about yesterday has been confirmed now, and the second is very close. If that job goes through then I will have enough work confirmed to keep me busy through the new year, 5 new shows and 2 new theatres on my resume. The downside, as I said yesterday is that this also means that I'll be in the city for barely a month before I leave again for a 6 week residency in PA. That's almost half the time that I've been away already. While I love the idea of being outside the city, and working in places other than Manhattan this long residency distresses me a little. Being away from home that long keeps me from restablishing my life there. A month in and then a month or more away means that I can't really date or start new patterns of anything. It's rough, but I want and need the work, so it's what I'll do.

I'm done.

I'm ready to go home.

I'm sick of actors and musicals and mosquitos and sandwiches and no cell reception and no high speed internet and singing right outside my door and not being able to do... anything.

I want to play cards with my friends and eat what I want and ride the subway and sketch and sleep in my own room and wear some different clothes and work with some different people and go to movies when I want and watch TV and... ugh.

I have three weeks left here. The last week will be pretty boring as the last two shows share a set and the only change in between is furniture. I really have nothing to do here, and what i do have left to do... I have very little will to actually do. I'm tired and I just want to be at home. UGH!

I have two very distinct jobs possibilities open to me after this, both of which are well paying, and both of which are outside NYC, a goal that I've had for a while now. One of them though would require a month long residence in the middle of bumfuck Pennsylvania and I'm not sure how much I really want to do that. I just want to be at home for a while.

Soon... soon... soon.

Earlier in the season when my wish to see a bear was fulfilled I realized that I had to upgrade my ultimate "seen it all" moment. After much thought I came to the conclusion that a pirate-monkey riding a cybernetic bear would be the ultimate, and so that's what I started wishing for. Today while perusing the internet I discovered that that dream may not be as far off as you might be thinking.

BEHOLD! Whiplash! The cowboy-monkey!!

My mom is visiting and has brought a veritable BOUNTY of southern delicacies that were a huge hit around the theatre tonight. We started with peaches the size of softballs that were so soft and juicy that they melted in your mouth. You definitely required a good hand-washing after eating one. Then came muscadines. Almost no one else here had ever had one but they became an instant hit and went very quickly. Tomorrow I plan to boil up the 10 lbs of raw peanuts she brought for me and I expect that they will go just as quickly. Also in the treasure trove were Duke's mayonnaise, some pralines and several jars of chow-chow but I plan to keep all of those for myself. I really miss southern food, (as anyone who has read me for any amount of time must know) and this was like manna from the gods. Thanks Mom and Bette for the treats!

I often tell people that reality breaks down around me, that coincidence is too strong a factor in my life and that connections get made in my life that don't get made for other people. Today I have another in a string of examples.

I know three people who live in Las Vegas. One is a stage manager who I met almost 6 years ago working in NC. The other two are a married couple, a director, and a musical director. When my friend Alison moved there a few weeks ago I told her that I'd try to introduce her to my friend the stage manager. (She already knew the other two because we all worked together last summer.) Last night I emailed my friend and gave her a little information about Alison and tried to nudge them a bit closer towards meeting. Today I get the following text message from Alison: "You know my light board op's wife. Small fucking world."

All I can say is... yes, smaller for me than for some it seems.

Here's a little glimpse into what I am doing here and how my job works. This sketch was completed back in April for a meeting with a director. This was the last of several sketches working through the concepts for this show.

About three months later here is the show as it appears onstage, the sketch brought to reality. There were some small changes as you can see, mostly to do with arrangement of platforming. The changes were made because I am using "stock" scenery, stuff that already exists and therefore doesn't impact my budget at all. When I was sketching I had no real idea what sizes and shapes of platforms existed, I just worked of my best guess based on what MOST theatres would have. I also didn't account visually for the band being onstage in my original sketch. I came pretty close though.

I'm in a funk, and I apologize to anyone who normally reads me here that I have allowed this funk to detrimentally affect this blog, but I have.

I'm not sure why I'm in a funk... lots of reasons I suppose.

BFE Michelle is moving away. She already lived 3 hours from me in the hinterlands of CT, but she's leaving me for the city that the Mouse built in Florida. (Otherwise known as Orlando.) I don't begrudge her her success, it's a better job and better opportunities and closer to her family and warmer and her house will probably have a pool, and she can get Duke's mayonnaise whenever she wants... but it still makes me sad.

I continue to walk the line of emotion here at work. The shows are great. We just opened what is arguably the best show I have been a part of here, either this year or last, but personal relationship still elude me. There's no one here that I feel really close to, unlike last year, and that makes me sad.

Work in the rest of the world is also a problem. As a freelancer I always know that there will be dry periods and that there may be months that I will have to eat a lot of PB&Js and ramen, and I also know that I rarely have work lined up more than a few months in advance, but I don't have a heck of a lot on my plate when I get back to the city and the prospect of temping petrifies me, and makes me sad.

The last few days have been punctuated by a nagging dry cough and headaches that I am marking down to the symptoms of some weird summer cold, and being sick always makes me sad.

So, in general... sadness.

Life has continued though. Since blogging last I have been to the city twice, once for pleasure once for business. I have had two job interviews, one of which I got but then had to turn down because of conflict dates, and one of which I didn't get. I floated down the Delware river in a raft. I've seen many bears. Played a lot poker, sometimes winning, most times not. I've seen a movie or two, all of which were bad. I've been downloading and loving season 3 of Project Runway. In spite of myself I've been enjoying Marvel's "Civil War" storyline, even though I want very badly not to. A little of everything, a little of nothing, the way it should be I suppose.

The saddest part is that I must be enjoying my "wallow" somehow because I don't feel much motivation to change it, not that I know how I would change it even if I did.

Hopefully I'll be back on my feet and normal again in a week or two. I promise to try and drop by a bit more often.

One of the pleasures of being ahead of schedule is that we have time to do... nothing. The set for the next show is 80% complete at this point, the remaining 20% being mainly a function of needed some specialized construction materials that had to be specially ordered. Friday was the first day of the build and at approximately 2 p.m. we were finished. We spent the rest of the afternoon debating whether we were going hiking or simply going into town for ice cream. (Ice cream won out.) Saturday we took the day off and set out for a small town about an hour from here that we had passed on the way to the campgrounds. It's one of those artistic mountain towns that relies mainly on tourism so the main street is full of kooky shops and small diners. On the way there we spotted a few yard sales and flea markets that we stopped at, ostensibly props shopping but really just killing time. There were a lot of great finds, a working high 8 camera, a box of about 30 8 tracks (that included the soundtrack to the movie Convoy!), a fleece blanket printed with a portrait of Rocky Balboa... and my personal favorite find a board game called RSVP from the makers of Scrabble.

If you can imagine a cross between Scrabble and Connect Four then you might get close to this game. Each player adds letters one at a time with the goal of spelling words, and blocking your opponent from spelling theirs. The fun comes in the fact that words on the horizontal axis are backwards on your opponent's side. There is some fun strategy involved, especially in waiting out your opponent's moves and stealing their words before they can complete them for themselves. It's not quite as seductive a game as the woman on the box makes it appear to be, but fun nonetheless.

Tomorrow I'm headed into the city for a brief trip to do a little sight seeing, run a few errands, and have a job interview for a show that is being produced when I get back into the city. It will be good to be away from the woods briefly and back in civilization.

The rain finally subsided a few weeks ago. Things dried out considerably, dropping to the normal summertime levels of a few showers here and there. This week was the first week that the temperature reached any considerable high, getting into the low 90's in the afternoon. Weeks of wet followed by warm temps means one thing though: MOSQUITOS. They are everywhere. Large ones, small ones, the mean buzzy kind that seem to derive pleasure from whining around your ears. Bug spray doesn't seem to deter them, citronella candles don't seem to bother them, and everyone is going nuts.

This summer's theme seems to be pests: mosquitos, bears (which still visit regularly), and non-equity actors.

As of 8 p.m. last night the third show of the season is open and playing to thunderous applause.... though I'm not sure why. This is by far the best selling show of the season so far, outstripping the previous show by huge percentages even though the previous show is smarter, funnier, sexier and better acted. The current show features a dozen small girls, (one of whom wears a curly red wig if you need a hint as to what the show might be) who run about the stage gleefully screeching songs. It's a fine show I suppose. The adults and most of the girls manage to act the show very well, the one purely adult number in the show is especially fun, and the design side looks great, (of course! but I mainly meant that the costumes were good, not just my stuff) I just don't understand why the show is so damned popular. I'd be willing to chalk it up to the relatives of the various girls buying out the house, except that every year about this time the theatre runs a survey in the programs asking the patrons to choose from a list of potential shows for next season. The winners so far this year: Cats, Funny Girl, and Oklahoma. Times like this really make me question why I do this job. Oklahoma at least has some sentimental value and a bit of charm, but the other two? Ugh. ESPECIALLY Cats. No one will ever successfully explain to me why that show is so stinking popular.

Tomorrow I start work on number 4, which is a unit set, (meaning that there are no set changes or big scenic shifts) so I estimate that it will be built by Monday, a full week ahead of schedule. That's good actually because it means that I can go into the next show with some spare time because it is the bear of the season. I'll need all the spare time I can muster to get it done I believe.

It's funny how everything here is the same, and nothing is as well. I am coming close to the halfway point of my time here this year and I finally feel like I am settled in. When I first arrived it felt as if I had been here all year really and that the last nine months in NYC hadn't happened at all. Then a few days later when things started getting rolling it felt like I was in a completely new place with no connection to last year.

First off very few people from last year returned, mostly the designers, and almost none of the staff. On the other hand a few people from two years ago returned, so an interesting dichotomy has been established between those of us who were here last year and ran things one way, and those who were here in years previous and ran things differently. Some of the changes from last year work, some didn't. The knowledge of previous years has made my work more efficient. It's been a balancing act. The work itself is about the same with the exception of the props person who makes the props produced last year look like they were made by a third grader.

The actors are the same way: the few returnees remember last year when most of the resident company liked each other at least, and got along well with the tech staff to boot. This year's group is surly and catty and not at all interested in much of anything outside their small musical theatre world. There are actors in the resident company who have not spoken a single word to me in the 6 weeks that we have been here. There are even a small handful that I am not 100% clear on their names. The talent levels in the resident company are also odd. Last year there was clearly a strong talent for either dance or singing in everyone. It was pretty clearly who was who in a brief time. This year no one seems to be very strong in either direction, and everyone seems pretty mediocre at both. Perhaps that is because this year was chosen on different purposes. Last year we just needed a generic chorus this year we specifically require a certain number of Asians, a certain number of black males and females, etc. in order to cast the shows properly, so the criteria for hiring is changed. There are of course a few standouts who will clearly have a career ahead of them, don't get me wrong. I just feel last year's cast was stronger all around.

In the end I'm happy to be back. I'm creating better, stronger designs because I have a better feel for the time limitations, and how to use the stock. I've also designed the entire season in a way that means pieces from every show will end up somewhere else later. At the end of the build period for the next show in fact the scenery for the final musical will be about 80% complete because pieces from every previous show will be doubling in. There are also all the fringe benefits of being in the woods, cooler weather than in the city, a break from concrete for a while... but I still can't help pining a bit for a "better" time past.

Rain... and we're talking Noah quality rain here... for 6 straight days now. Everything is wet, including things we don't want to be. When the air is cool and the humidity is 100% paint won't dry. Did you know that? I do now. Here's another interesting fact for you: rain makes for an incredibly difficult load in weekend.

That's right, this weekend was our first full change-over (taking down the set for the previous show and loading in the new set for this week). And it SUCKED. Nothing was dry, not the paint, not the scenery, not the stage, not the crew, not my shoes, not... well... you get the point I imagine. I had rain literally wash the wet paint off of things I had just painted.

Somehow we managed to get everything done without drowning, but now we have no audience. You see 6 days of rain in a region that is mountainous and has more streams than I've ever seen in one place means flooding and mudslides. 4 of the 5 major highways that would get people to the theatre were closed today because one lane or another was washed out somewhere along the way. Over half of our audience cancelled for tonight's performance... and it's still raining.

I went to Wal-Mart tonight to purchase some boots and a poncho. Every pair of shoes I brought with me is either waterlogged or inappropriate for work (sandals). I'd prefer the hot sweaty summer of last year to this.

In good news, aside form the rain the load-in went extremely well. I don't know if it is the different crew, or the fact that I am better organized this year but we managed to get through with very little fuss. I had full nights of sleep on both nights. I had very little in the way of panicked running around trying to get things done at the last minute. There were of course a handful of stressful moments, but nothing major. I got through it all barely bruised. (And as an aside to Alison: Grumpy-Cully BARELY showed his face tuesday morning, but was predominantly absent.)

The next show is a little bigger, probably the biggest of the year really, so I hope that things will go as smoothly. We'll know in two weeks.

Equity Monday left all of the tech staff in a little bit of a lurch as to what to do with ourselves. A few plans had been discussed on and off, a hike in a local park, a little bit of boating at a local pond, some fishing, sleeping a lot... but nothing was really seeming to stick. During the poker game I brought up the idea of Geocaching which seemed to be an instant hit.

The basic concept of geocaching is sort of a high tech treasure hunt. People all over the world have placed secret caches of toys, or camping accessories, or other goodies in hidden locations in state parks, along camping trails, or just about anywhere. (Go to the website and look up your zip-code and I'm sure you'll find dozens close by you.) The GPS coordinates of the "treasure" are placed online along with clues and ratings of how hard it is to locate and hike to etc. Anyone with a GPS unit is welcome to track them down. Etiquette is that you take an item from the cache, usually some small trinket, and leave one of your own to replace it.

We set out for Wal-Mart Monday and found a cheap GPS unit which I purchased, (partially with my poker winnings). Then we checked the web and chose a half dozen local caches to visit. The first was at a location that we were familiar with, having already visited it earlier in the summer, a dam at the end of a reservoir. Unfortunately the cache itself proved elusive, and the clues were infuriatingly vague. After an hour of tromping through bushes we gave up and decided that it wasn't to be found. It was a frustrating start since none of us had ever done this before and a few people were expecting a bit more "bang."

The second location also proved a little frustrating. The heavy tree cover flummoxed the GPS unit a bit and the creator of the cache had not left a clue at all. After about a half an hour I was sensing that the crowd was on the verge of giving up on the whole idea, just as someone found the cache! It was a really renewing moment, suddenly the game was fun again and everyone wanted to see what was hidden inside.

The third location was inside a wildlife preserve and provided some great scenery as well as a fun cache. We were on the way to a fourth location within the same preserve when it suddenly began pouring rain so we called it off. We spent the evening back at the theatre where we grilled some fat steaks and asparagus and fried up potatoes. All in all it was a good day. I really need to do some research on how to properly navigate by GPS rather than just stumbling around in the woods staring at numbers and scratching my head though. We've also decided that as a group we will probably place our own cache at some point this summer.

Tomorrow is the dark Monday for this show (we don't perform on Monday's because it is the day off for the actor's union, but every other Monday is load-in for the next show, so the tech crew works anyway, tomorrow however no one works) so tonight was also a night off. To celebrate a group of about 15 of us got together and played poker.

Now... I have played poker once in my life, and it was here last year. I lost miserably, and was the first one off the table. Tonight however I cleaned the house. We started with two tables of 6 and played until both tables were at 3 then combined the tables in order to play to a winner. I was up and down all night, a few times it looked like I was going to be the next one out, but I have watched a LOT of Celebrity Poker Showdown, so I knew when to be aggressive and when to hang back a bit, even if I was sometimes unsure about the order of the winning hands. It was a $5 buy in, and a few people bought in twice, so in the end the pot ended up at $70. We had decided in tournament style to split the pot 50-35-15. After nearly 5 hours of play I came in not only in the top three, but as the big winner! I went out in my final hand with a low straight A-2-3-4-5. I never really understood gambling, but it was fun, and I'm sure if there is another game I'll buy in.

In other news the bears continue to be a nuisance. The DEC has been out several times and tonight informed us that if they are called again, or if they are forced to "dispatch" the bear then the playhouse will be fined $1200 because our dumpsters don't have the proper latches and the refrigerators shouldn't be outdoors. Now no one is sure what to do about the whole thing. On the the one hand we don't want to be fined, but on the other there are at least two bears now visiting us regularly for snacks. What do you do?

Well... seems like someone wanted to remind me that this project was still uncompleted.

Harder than it looks isn't it Mama?

There's a lot of wildlife where I am. I see deer every day, usually a half a dozen or more. I see wild turkey with frequency. There are fox, chipmunks, skunks, porcupines, and raccoons prowling around all the time. But for three months last year, and nearly a month this year everyone was seeing bears. Everyone but me that is.

Luke saw a bear crossing the road. There were bears in the parking lot of the actor's housing. They were sitting in fields on the side of the road. They were strolling through the parking lots of local restaurants, but I kept missing them.

Yesterday I returned from a morning of prowling the local flea market for props and was greeted by the company manager telling us that there had been a bear on the back porch of the Tavern, and that we should be careful. Of course that really meant that we all went running towards the Tavern to get a look. Seems that he had come up onto the porch, where there are several refrigerators and had started helping himself to the lettuce and the grapes stored within. he had stumbled off into the woods afterwards, and everyone said he looked a little wobbly. They had already called the Department of Environmental Conservation, the local agency that takes care of bears and other injured wildlife, who were on their way to check it out. We caught a few glimpses of him in the woods, he was a small fellow, about 200 lbs. probably. But he was a bear, and I had finally gotten to see a wild bear in his natural setting. It was great!

After we had lost sight of him for 10 minutes or so we decided to return to work. As we were walking across the lot to the shop we realized there was a bear in the dumpster, about 200 yards from where we had seen him last. How had he gotten there? We quickly realized that this wasn't the same bear though. The new visitor was much bigger, about 400 lbs. we guessed.
This bear sat in the dumpster for nearly an hour while we calmly snapped pictures, and even ate lunch on the deck of the tavern close by, while we waited for the DEC officer. He seemed utterly unconcerned that we were there.
The DEC officer came and peppered the bear with rubber buckshot to scare him off. But that only lasted a few hours. As soon as the sun started setting he came back and returned to his seat in the dumpster. The problem being that about that time is also when the patrons start arriving for the evening show. DEC returned and hustled him out again, and recommended that we splash bleach around the dumpsters as a deterrent. That didn't seem to help either as he returned twice during the show. He also returned to the refrigerators early this morning and had himself a healthy snack.

The producer is very concerned, not only for the safety of his food numbers but for the safety of the patrons and the staff. We frequently have to go by the Tavern refrigerators, and to the dumpsters after dark in the course of our daily routines. Since neither the buckshot, nor the bleach seemed to work though, I'm not sure what else he is going to try.

The good news though is that have now seen at least two different bears, and the outlook seems promising for seeing a few more before the summer, (and possibly the week) is out. Now if I can get a glimpse of one of the local bald eagles I think my wildlife adventures will be complete.

Well, I'm a few days late, but I had a pretty interesting day on the 12th, (at least for the people NOT actually in theatre) so I thought I'd share my 12 of 12 for this month. (Based on a project started by Chad Darnell.)
Tuesday happened to be the first day of tech for the first show this season. I was greeted right out of the gate by this. As you can probably tell the lights on this thing are supposed to go all the way across. And they DID when I went to bed. But at 9am... they didn't.
A brief meeting between the technicians and the stage manager to go over the shift plot. (Details of how the scenery moves during the show.)
11am finds me running over to the furniture storage shed to claim two wooden chairs that I had overlooked pulling earlier in the week.
Shima enjoys tech rehearsals too. Can't you tell?
The actors finally take stage at 4pm.
At 6pm this thing still isn't working. Where the hell do you get Christmas lights on short notice in the middle of June?
More acting. This isn't exactly my favorite show to be honest... but I tried to make it look pretty.
The sun sets about 9pm. The actors are still on stage. After 5 hours, (including an hour for dinner) we still haven't completed Act One.
More acting. This is one of my favorite pieces of scenery in the show.
On my hands and knees at midnight doing a few quick notes. (Technically the 12th is over at this point, but my day continues.)
The tech crew toasts the end of tech day one!
2am raid on the kitchen for grilled cheese sammiches.

My rendition of the Kaaterskill falls.

A small stream that was about 100 yards behind our campsite.

Camping was fabulous! We headed out Sunday afternoon about 2 up through the Catskills to a place called North-South Lake Campgrounds. It's a small state parks in a valley where there are two beautiful lakes. The lakes though are the smallest part of what is available in the campground scenically.

Sunday was cold and rainy, a trend here this summer, and ass we drove up we started to notice that the trees had not even come into full green yet at some of the altitudes we passed. That scared us a bit. By the time we reached the campground though things were looking pretty good. Most of the afternoon was spent setting up the tarps and things that we would sleep under for the next two nights, and then a short hiking trip to see a small waterfall called Mary's Glenn. The park is beautiful but three straight days of rain had left everything pretty swampy and the hiking paths had literally been turned into streams that we had to wade through in order to get anywhere. It was a good day, but it made for a cold night sleeping in the damp, and trying to dry out our shoes by the fire.
The next day was full of adventure. The sun had come out and dried up a good deal of the area so we set out to see what the park truly offered. First up was Kaaterskill Falls, the tallest falls in New York State at 150 feet. We approached the falls from the top first, then scaled down the mountain so that we could see it's full glory. The falls has three different levels where it plateaus, and at the second level you have to pass behind the falls in order to complete the hike down. It was a staggering view. The falls from the bottom were truly amazing though and we spent a good while photographing and sketching and just basking in it.

After that was Artist's Rock a cliff face where the whole of the Hudson Valley is visible. That was followed by Sunset Rock where we shared a watermelon on the peak and enjoyed the view of the lakes that give the park it's name. Then came a short hike to the former site of the Catskill Mountain House, a former resort hotel that overlooked the valley. It left us all pretty wiped out and the we were in our sleeping bags as soon as the sun set.

The next morning we were up at 6, and on the way back to the theatre for a day of work. we were all stiff and tired and it was a long day of building scenery and trying to recover from our adventures.

The next dark day we are planning a trip to a campground in Montauk, and while on this trip we saw a rafting place in a town called Pheonicia that we plan to take advantage of later in the summer. It's nice to be in the outdoors and actually taking advantage of it for once, unlike last year.

All last year I agonized over the fact that I was here in the mountains and unable to take advantage of it. I begged and pleaded with several of the local employees to take me fishing, or just loan me fishing equipment and point me in the right direction. I did a bare minimum of hiking, but it wasn't much of a grand adventure and I came away a bit disappointed.

This year the TD is a huge fan of the outdoors, and also has the advantage of having worked here in previous years and being familiar with the local hiking trails and streams and things. Already we have had a (semi-drunken) adventure hiking in the pitch black night across the top of a hydro-electric dam and scaling the catwalk in the face to touch the geyser of water pouring out of it. Tomorrow is the first "dark-Monday" of the season, (meaning no rehearsals or work in progress) so the tech crew has planned a camping trip. In a few minutes we are setting out for a national park a few miles up the road for a day and a half of hiking and camping out under the stars (no tents here). I am thrilled by the whole prospect and can't wait! Luke (the TD) says that the park is gorgeous and the camping areas are quite nice. Look for a full report on Tuesday! Until then, I'll be in the woods. Well... even deeper into the woods.

Tonight one of the patrons of the Playhouse opened up his home for a party to welcome the staff and resident company of actors for the season. This is a new event which didn't occur last year. All week there were rumors flying about the property and it's owners who are perhaps best described as eccentric. The main house is an old stone hatchery that has been converted to a literal mansion. It has some palatial rooms, including some bathrooms larger than my NYC apartment. The original estate was 8,500 acres of mountains and land. All around the grounds are collections of exotic animals. Llamas, alpacas, various parrots, macaws, and other tropical birds and a large colony of Galapagos tortoises. (Such as the one confronting our TD Luke above.) Rumor has it that there were also some macaques in the basement of the house, but we weren't allowed to see them because they apparently become aggressive when confronted with large groups of people. The owner was quite nice about it though and offered to show us the monkeys on an individual basis whenever we liked. In fact he offered to invite us all over again when the weather was sunnier so that we could enjoy one of the three (!) lakes on the property. I always knew that there were tons of animals in this area, I see deer and turkey on an almost daily basis, and I hear rumors of bears close by, but I had never known that there was an exotic animal preserve so close as well.