Do I wake or sleep?

I'm so busy I barely have time to write about how busy I am. Non-stop rehearsing this past weekend and next weekend is even worse. It's actually quite stressful--I'd really love to just have one day off, with nothing to do, but that won't happen for at least two and a half weeks. But the show is on its feet--it is entirely blocked and we have been working and polishing ever since. I'm especially proud of the Foeman number which I choreographed entirely myself--it is a tricky little number about military formation, playing on the humor of the daughters turning into this bloodthirsty militaristic marchers and dragging the cops on to a gory death.

Though your foes are fierce and ruthless
False, unmerciful and truthless
Young and tender, old and toothless
All in vain, their mercy crave!

I've been drilling the heck out of this--you would not believe how easy it is to get off the beat! I keep telling them, military cadence is always on the left foot. Ah-left, ah-left, ah-left, right, left...But I love it, it's my favorite number. The blank faces of the girls, marching implacably on, contrasted with the mounting panic of the two cops (Caley lets out this yelp as she's pushed on, it's hilarious) cracks me up.

And we have new pirates! We have two new first-act pirates, our two cops Don and Caley, and two full-timers, Steven, who was in Rent last winter, and of course Duncan. I will be covering for Duncan for the first weekend--it may be confusing switching pirates in and out, but at least the two of us know the score VERY well (although I keep having to stop myself from singing daughter lines--it's especially challenging during the leadup to "Here's a first-rate opportunity," I keep singing "Too late!" instead of "Ha ha! Ho ho!"). Anyway with this plethora of brigands, we have a nice full stage for the first sequence.

Immersed in reading right now--medieval science. It's not as easy as you'd think. This course is actually more of a philosophy course, not history--last week the professor said something about "remember the historical context of these writings" and I thought "WHAT context? The only way I know anything that's happening is by doing my own outside research--we almost never talk about actual events in this class."

Additional busy-ness--I'm assistant-directing Andrew Rothkin's Macbeth and he is crazy with the emails. I mean, multiple emails every day, and we're not even having auditions until January. I told him I'm not worth much until Pirates goes up and then I'll be more accessible.

And more--I'm doing a reading with Micahel Clay, my first Marley and our Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet--it's next week, next Wednesday at noon.

And more--I HAVE to stay on top of the trip to Dublin! Gotta start thinking about getting cash, and reserving tickets to the Abbey and whatnot, if that's not too late. Can't wait!

As soon as it ended, I turned to Tesse and said ( Here There Be Spoilers )

The paper is sailing along now--just 1-2 paragraphs more, and it's done and I just have to proof, make sure my citations are in order, and write a bibliography. One HUGE thing off my plate from this Week of Hell.

This then is Abelard’s ideal woman—just “modern” enough that she flouts convention with her erudition and strength of principle, and yet enough of their time that he can put the blame on her, the woman (“since the beginning of the human race, women had brought the noblest men to ruin,” 13) and that she ultimately bows to his wishes. But is this the true Heloise, or does Abelard see her through a glass darkly—the glass of vanity? Did Heloise see herself as a pioneer or was she trying to fulfill medieval expectations for her gender? Her own writings prove most illuminating in this respect.

I gotta namecheck Patient Griselda in there somewhere.

Yeah, this week--UGH. My brother is arriving Wednesday to visit with Bart and me, and to take back Edna Mo. Of course he can't actually take the cat until Sunday, because Bart's place already has one cat-molesting dog and they really can't accomodate another. Of course I understand but--I was *really* hoping she would be gone sooner rather than later. She's just so stressful. Both Anya and I have been vomiting after cleaning up her numerous and myriad messes. She urinates, she defecates, she pukes. It's like we have a feline Linda Blair living with us, except that when she's not like that, she's precious and I adore her. (She give me little head butts to my forehead all the time.) But yeah, we have to keep her in the bathroom when we're gone (read: for most of the day) so she acts out. STRESSFUL.

And trying to write a paper when your laptop has been self-destructing--not fun. Quite a few keys have popped off so I had to buy a new keyboard and plug it into the USB port. I will probably be getting one of those netbooks, but can't even think about that for a few weeks, I'm so busy right now.

We started blocking rehearsals yesterday--it went great! My principals are all terrific, picked up my direction immediately, except for our Pirate King who looks perfect and has a fantastic voice but is a leettle too gesture-y. So I gotta work with him on that. But yeah, so much fun working our way through the script and finding little nuances here and there.

Oh, also, I'm doing a reading of Mark Twain's The Diary of Adam and Eve the first week in November. Michael Clay, my Marley from Christmas Carol '07 and our Friar Laurence from R&J is a parishioner at the First Presbyterian Church down in the Village and asked me to do this with him. And guess who's a parishioner--F. Murray Abraham! I hope he comes to see it.

A little less than two weeks and my brother will be here to take home Edna Mo. We are literally counting the days! We love her but she is a HANDFUL--major elimination issues and of course Tatia hates her (not like that's any kind of isolating factor--Tatia hates every other feline life form). Stuart will be here from next Wednesday to Sunday which leaves me Friday night and all day Saturday to play with him and Bart! (Maybe Sunday--possibly I could fit in a brunch before he leaves).

Friday TTC had a benefit at the space and I sang "Times Like This" from Lucky Stiff. The ending of the first verse actually got a laugh--I thought that song was better-known (I won't spoil it but the end of the first verse is a misdirect which, if done properly, is funny). Anya came with me so she got to meet Peggy and Dave--they're doing Rocky Horror this winter, and Anya would be great in that. She'd be a great Columbia except I'm not sure if she has the tap skills.

We finally got a music director for Pirates--a guy named John Bronston who works at the Duplex and who, as it turns out, I know already. He used to work with the Lady of Copper people way back--I was all "huh! I don't remember you..." But he seems cool and most importantly, didn't have a problem with the cuts I'd made. Saturday I went through the score with a red pen, eliminating the MANY redundant elements--there are SO many repeated verses, repeated choruses, repeated jokes in the Pirates score. And then just random things that come out of nowhere, like "Hail, Poetry!" Buh-bye, poetry. Likewise "Sighing Softly to the River..."--that number will not work in a small studio space like this, a slow, sight-gag number like that is meant for a large proscenium stage. It's cut a lot of the time anyway--I know it was cut in at least one of the productions I've done of Pirates, our Major-General did a patter number from, I think, Ruddigore.

So, so busy right now--I'm in the middle of taking notes for a paper due next week. Heloise, proto-modern woman or conventional medieval Griselda--discuss! Speaking of things medieval, I missed the Fort Tryon Park Renaissance Faire again this year *sad face* Last year I had a good excuse, I was in London--I just forgot about it this year, although possibly I wouldn't have been able to go anyway (because of--MY SCHEDULE. Which is cray-cray right now).

So Tony Curtis just died. And the first thing I think of is that he refused to see Brokeback Mountain but voted against it for the Oscar anyway. And bragged about it. And claimed other Academy members felt the same way. Assclown.

The other thing I remember was when he was promoting his book back in--the late '90s? And he was on Letterman or some show like that, and retelling something from the book, about how he'd visited Elvis Presley in Las Vegas, and walked into Elvis's dressing room and found Ann-Margret [ACCORDING TO HIM, take with a grain of salt] "on her knees on front of Elvis giving him a very convincing hello" or some such creepy, smirky nonsense like that. I couldn't stand him after that. It just seemed so ungentlemanly. Look guys, those of you who claim to be straight (you have to wonder with someone like Curtis, he tries so hard to convince you of what a womanizer he is), we all know you like blow jobs and none of you would turn one down. So why you treat the women who actually give them to you like they're garbage? You can't simultaneously tut-tut and leer.

For a much worse example of this sort of thing, I'm terribly saddened by this poor Rutgers student, whose roommate set up a web cam to film him having sex--*gasp, clutch pearls*--with a MAN. And bragged about it on Twitter. And then the poor guy killed himself. FUCK. According to this link, he may or may not have actually broadcast it (and I still have no idea why the girl is being charged, I haven't heard that she did anything) but still WTF. That poor, poor guy. A talented violinist, with beautiful reddish-blonde hair, a young guy with everything to look forward to. Rest in peace, Tyler.

What with that and all these other sad, sad stories of young gay men killing themselves, it just seems to be a dark time right now.

So, Rachel's post reminded me that I haven't yet posted this news on LJ--my middlest brother, Erik, and his wife are now the proud parents of twins!  YAAAAAAAAY!  Twins!  A girl and a boy, Erik, Jr. and Emily.  So, so, so flipping adorable!  It's all kinds of perfect because Erik and I are the two siblings who are closest in age, only 18 months apart, and we used to pass ourselves off as twins all the time.  The hilarious thing is, we're not even blood related--Erik is adopted--but we both had blonde hair, freckles and blue eyes, and people bought it.  (Until they found out we were two grades apart, then we just blithely said "oh, he was held back and I skipped a grade." Heh.)  Even now Erik will teasingly call me his "twin," you'll see this on FB sometimes.  Even better, when we were kids I LOVED the Bobbsey Twins books--I read all of them, the original editions and the rewrites--and we used to play Bobbsey Twins all the time.  I loved that both sets of Bobbsey Twins were boy and girl, like a perfect little matched set, and within both sets each one looked like the other. Bert and Nan had straight brown hair and brown eyes, and the younger set, Freddie and Flossie, had curly blonde hair and blue eyes.  Something for everyone!  I just loved the matchiness of it.  So I am loving that my niece and nephew have alliterative names, and they'd BETTER look alike!

So, it's been a little scary so far--they've had some problems with the babies--but it looks as though everything is coming together and they're going to be fine. I'm so happy for them both.

Had a lovely time as always. Tim had called the night before, wondering about the rain--I said hells yeah, we should go, I'd been checking the forecast (obsessively) all week and it looked as though there might be showers but not steady rain.

Due to cat shenanigans (that third cat really does add to the cleaning load exponentially), I ended up leaving later than I meant to but no worries, just sailed on out to Flushing Meadows on the ol' 7, reading The Odyssey. That train ride always kills me during the Open--you can see more and more tennis fans getting on, all wearing polos or US Open tee-shirts or hats or whatever. Everyone's in a good mood. Got there around 12:00 and Tim met me with the tickets. We saw some great people play, including Andy Murray (the Great Scot--he rocked), Venus (for like the fifth or sixth time, we always seem to catch her. Where is my Maria?! I'm dying to watch her), Sam Querry, Anna Ivanović, Tim Isner and Rafael Nadal. The Nadal match was SO great--he played against Denis Istomin and the guy seemed to be dying in the first set, and then he really, really fought after that. A lot of us had on the American Express radios (they have a booth where they give them out to cardholders and Tim always gives me his) and McEnroe's commentary was so enthusiastic, saying "Nadal is having the time of his life out there--he's playing a worthy opponent who's making him work and I've never seen him give so much respect to an opponent." The whole crowd was behind this guy--I mean, of course we wanted Nadal to win but this guy was really working and did a great job. I was cheering out loud for him, encouraging him. Tennis is such a lonely sport--it's really hard to die out there. So the crowd always gets behind a good effort (Venus's match was not as close but people were similiarly encouraging to her opponent). So much fun.

We had dinner at a restaurant inside the grounds called Mojitos--food was great (I had scallops, big fat ones) but we made a mistake in ordering a pitcher of mojitos. You really shouldn't make them by the pitcher, they have so many disparate ingredients, they're best made one at a time.

Great, great time. I love the Open.

A couple of exciting projects coming up. First off, a few weeks ago Andrew Rothkin asked me to be a part of a production of Macbeth that he's directing. It goes up in March at the Wings Theater. He didn't specify a function, just wanted me to be involved somehow, so I said I'd love to be the dramaturg. Then as it turned out he kind of did have a function--he also wants me to be the assistant-director, which is fine as long as I don't have to come to a whole ton of rehearsals. Also, since it looks as though we're teching during spring midterms, I said that's got to be my priority and he was fine with that. The producer is a woman named Christine Seisler, and she's also playing Lady M. She seems very cool. We've had a couple of meetings so far and I like how things are going.

The other project--as most of you know, this past season has been a transitional one for TTC. Dave et al. have been trying to find a permanent space for awhile now and like a week ago I remember thinking "at this time last year they had the benefit, I wonder what's happening?" Well, last Thursday I got two emails from Dave. One was sent to about 10-15 of us, telling how TTC had signed a lease for the new space. It's located at the Monroe Center, where they did Rent last winter. So yay! Very happy that's been settled. The second email was addressed just to me, telling me the season lineup--and asking if I would be interested in directing the inaugural production, The Pirates of Penzance. I wrote back "I would love to! I love that show, it's my favorite G&S and I've done it twice already. I even have the DVD of The Pirate Movie [thank you, Chris] !!!" Am completely thrilled and can't wait to start conferencing about this. God, I love that show. My dream version would be an all-female version set in a boarding school--like, these girls in the school put on their own subversive version (and of course I'd play the Pirate King!)--but this will be more conventional :) Oooh, such a busy fall!

I registered for class yesterday. "Medieval Intellectual Life 1050-1400," here I come! We get to study Eloise and Abelard (which I read back in undergrad), Dante's Comedy (excellent, I can whip out my pictures of the Lago d'Averno in Campagnia) and The Book of the City of Ladies. Never read that but that's what I'm here for. This class should be much easier than Roman History, which covered so much--1200 years of history, no less. This is more like people sitting around and thinking deep thoughts and shit.

I found all the books on Amazon for muuuuch less than the publisher's list price. Ehhhxcellent *steeples fingers* And the class is on the Barnard campus! I always feel so cozy when I'm over there, like, aww, you guys, I went to a Seven Sisters school too! Women's college love!

I really am excited, can you tell? :)

Last night I went over to Tesse's for our weekly Mad Men date. Okay, Matthew Weiner? You need to stop writing Betty as misogyny-bait. I get tired of Betty doing something to her kids that is going to provoke a torrid flood of shitty comments about how horrible she is. I know, I know--the only good female characters in MM are Peggy and Joan. The quotient has been filled and all the others are: narcissistic bitches (Betty) (that's a direct quotation, BTW); stalkers (Suzanne Farrell), boring, superior and anachronistic (Dr. Faye Miller), stupid whores who should've known better than to expect the slightest consideration after getting boinked by the boss (Allison)...I know I should just accept the conventional fan wisdom but I don't. All of these characters are real and dimensional--there are perhaps one or two unredeemably bad characters in my opinion on the show--Lee garner, Jr. (God, what a great villain, "puddid awn, Roguh!") and Duck, and even Duck has redeeming qualities, they're just not enough in my eyes. (I loathe--LOATHE--Duck because of what he did to Chauncey. I hate Duck more than I hate Joan's husband.) Betty is not a narcissistic bitch--she's a woman emerging from an extremely damaged and damaging marriage where her husband undermined her every chance he got. (And not because he's a horrible person but because Don is also damaged.)

And as I keep pointing out, things were different back then. Parents disciplined differently. Other people's parents even disciplined differently (season 1, when the neighbor smacks the kid who's not his who's running through the house at Sally's birthday party). Getting smacked in the face WAS a severe punishment but yes, it was done. As I posted on Facebook, I was smacked in the face by an aunt at a much younger age than Sally (I was about 5-6), and harder, and no one did anything about it--and that was in the '70s. (And my aunt was MUCH more physically imposing than Betty, she was at least three times my size, a very tall, athletic woman.) It may also be a WASP thing--as a cultural generalization, they're not particularly touchy-feely and they do discipline physically. I was also spanked, as were my brothers, and not just with the hand, I got the paddle. We also had our mouths washed out with soap. I have mixed feelings about all of this: for one thing, I gave my aunt a very wide berth after that and never forgot what she did. And I don't think parents should spank with objects (like a paddle or a belt). But I do think spanking on the butt, with a hand, is fine. (It goes without saying I obviously don't think other parents should have the right to physically discipline a child who's not theirs. On the other hand, feel free to step in and scold the child, if they need it--it takes a village.) Honestly I do not see the harm in that--the butt has a lot of fat which is why it's painful but doesn't do any damage. And I don't think I was scarred for life by having my mouth washed out either. I remember my parents (by that I mean my dad and stepmother) asking me after I became an adult about being spanked--I said of course I hated it. "So...?" "So I tried not to misbehave after that!" They both laughed.

ANYWAY. My point is that I really do see Don as being just as bad a parent in his own way--yes, he is more easy-going but he can be, because he is there less. Obviously he's there less now because of the divorce, but even before, during the marriage, he was:

*working all the time and skipping Thanksgiving (season 1)
*skipping out on his daughter's birthday party to go get drunk
*leaving family events to go hook up with Bobbie Barrett (the country club event)
*drunk-driving with Bobbie Barrett in the middle of the night
*flitting off to California for a month
*leaving the house so he can spend the night with his DAUGHTER'S TEACHER.

Even in this episode he had a date when the kids were there, and later on he admitted he had mixed feelings about being around them. Betty even tried to point this out to him in Season 2, how much more time she spends with them than he does, when she was getting frustrated with Bobby's behavior and said "you're not with them all day like I am." No, you're not, Don. And apparently you don't want to be any more than Betty does. Maybe if you were, you'd have as short a fuse as she does. It's very easy to be the Good Parent when you're never there--you have less time in which to make a mistake. And it's to Betty's credit that even after her horrible experiences with a psychiatrist in Season 1, she was able to listen to Henry's advice and see about getting one for Sally.

But can I ask, why was everyone SO upset about Sally's Adventures in Hair-Styling? Kids do that. Not only did I cut my little brother's hair (he had big fat blond curls all over his head, like Freddie Bobbsey and hated them. So I obligingly cut them off for him.) I also did the same thing to myself when I was in the 8th grade, cut my own bangs. (This is one time where my urgency to ACT did not pay off--huge mistake.) Either time, nobody punished me. Kids do this sort of thing.

Tesse and I were shocked at Roger's behavior toward the Honda executives but then I started thinking about it--if Roger really did fight in the Pacific theater during WWII, I think his hatred is more understandable. Yes, what Joan said is absolutely right--you fought to make the world a better place and now it is. Absolutely. But sometimes you can't let go of things so quickly. The Pacific theater was brutal. Read about the Bataan Death March sometime, it was horrible. Really, just heart-breaking, they would just behead weak prisoners, or any kind of prisoner, for no reason. Incredibly depressing. There's other stuff as well, like the Rape of Nanking.. It's absolutely to Japan's credit that they rejected their brutal militarism after the war (even to the point that the Japanese Constitution now prohibits war) but someone like Roger may not be able to let go of those feelings so easily. Anyway, I think he's entitled to them.