Do I wake or sleep?

I was on the train to work yesterday afternoon, and got out at Columbus Circle to transfer to the D or B, both of which go to my final stop. There were muffled announcements about the D, something about its having been rerouted, which were confirmed when the D came trundling down the local line (it is normally express). They kept the D cooling its wheels for at least 7 minutes as the conductor explained, over and over, to passengers that that D would be running along a different line (8th Avenue) instead of along 6th Avenue. Fine, then GET GOING. As long as they stayed there, the B train (a local) couldn't come in. Then another D came in, and stayed there. During this time at least 6 A trains came and went. SO ANNOYING.

Finally a B came along and I got in. I guess the excessive delay had unhinged some people because I could hear some woman speaking very sharply to someone on the other end of the car. "No, you shut up. No, shut up." In one of those hideous Brooklyn accents--in fact she sounded quite like The Fungus (I could tell it wasn't she, though). She kept going on, and I could hear another woman trying to explain "If you'd just said that at the beginning, I wouldn't have bothered you--" She kept trying to explain herself or defuse the situation, but Brooklyn Accent wasn't having it and kept cutting her off. The whole car was listening (she was pretty loud). She was saying something like "Don't you EVUH cawl anothuh woman a bitch! How dayuh you!"

I had to be at the other end of the car anyway so I started edging my way down to one of the middle doors (I couldn't get all the way to the other end, the car was too packed). So I stopped at one of the middle doors and just as the other woman seemed to have decided it was pointless to try to say anything to Brooklyn Accent. But then someone else decided to take up the slack--some guy, younger (maybe in his late 20s) with an iPod asked her "Have you taken your meds?" She snarled "This has nothing to do with you." He said "You've involved the whole car because you're incredibly annoying. You need to be shut the fuck up." She said something about "Your mothuh" and he responded "Oh, 'your mother' jokes, really? How original." This went on for a bit--he just kept shutting her down with these unflappable responses. It was pretty entertaining. I wanted to point out to her the hypocrisy in her first saying "don't call women bitches" and then insulting some guy's mother. I did get a better look at Brooklyn Accent--she even looks a bit like The Fungus! Reddish, messy hair, pasty skin, a few extra pounds. How horrifying to think there's more than one.

So the Friday morning commute from hell? Was apparently planned. Part of a planned, calculated middle finger to commuters, to punish us for what their crappy management is doing. If their aim is to underscore how worthless and without honor most TWU members are, and to get NYC commuters to side with MAT management, well then excellent job, me hearties!

Fire them all. Every last worthless one of them.

Went to the TRU auditions Saturday and saw Catherine Lamm and had a nice long chat with her about the court case and Macbeth. We enjoyed chewing over every juicy bit of the case, and of course talked about Julie quite a bit. First of all, get this--Catherine is some kind of bigwig with TRU, I believe her official title for the auditions was "Casting Coordinator" or something like that. In the past Julie has attended TRU auditions to cast for Lovestreet--in fact one year I sat in for her. This year I wanted to go but I also didn't want to run into Julie, have her come up to me and fake like we're still cool. Julie, we're not. She's trapped other Macbeth actors before--Lori was cornered in the Drama Desk Bookstore once--and I just didn't want to deal with it.

When I got to the auditions, I had to wait a bit for a break before I could go into the room, so Emileena and I chatted a bit. I asked to see the list of auditors and noticed Julie was not on it--I was all YES! Then when I finally entered and sat down, Duncan told me the dish--apparently Catherine got Julie barred from the auditions. Catherine confirmed it, she said she told TRU "I won't be here if she's here" so they asked Julie to leave. Duh-ra-ma! I love it.

Catherine was talking about what a great job we'd all done, especially the Witches--"I loved you Witches"--then she dropped a bombshell that really took me aback. In fact I'm not at all sure how to take this. She said that during the rehearsal process, Julie had been trying to get Catherine to fire ME. This--seems off. For one thing, Julie had absolutely no grounds for that--Catherine said she refused, saying "you'll have to give me a reason, she's doing great work." (When I asked Catherine what reason Julie had given, Catherine shrugged and said "Because you're good and she's not?" Well, thank you, that is a nice compliment but did Julie really say that? And God knows, Michelle and Lori were also fantastic. At any rate, Julie never came off as the jealous type to me. Insecure as hell, sure, but not jealous.) For another, I've helped Julie on many, many occasions--I convinced her not to cancel the show when PsychoSusan melted down, I've done benefits for her, as I mentioned I've sat in for her, I've even taken her out for her birthday. Julie's weird but would she really 1) dick over someone who'd helped her out that much--attack me that personally?, and 2) risk a complete mutiny in the cast, since she'd already fired the first director, Lew? Also, Julie came after me several months later, asking me to come back to Lovestreet. Of course she could've done a turnaround but still, I just don't know if I buy this. Another thing that strikes me as off is that--well, if Julie wanted to, she could fire anyone she wanted herself--she doesn't have to go through the director, she's the producer. Very odd. Part of me wonders if Catherine weren't mixing me up with someone else in the cast. She knew the Witches as a unit, she never really got to know us individually.

At any rate, I'm much less upset about it than I thought I'd be--partly because it just seems so off, and partly because it was awhile ago.

On another note, I'm really glad I went to the TRU auditions. Duncan is not so enthralled with them as I, but there's something inspirational in a grassroots organization that tries to empower each other. (And besides, they catered the auditions with Amy's Bread.) I got all excited about maybe doing something this summer--I think I'm going to talk to someone at Columbia to inquire about the possibility of doing an outdoor show there this summer, maybe a very-staged reading. Maybe even Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra, since I've been studying them! Plus you get awesome fights with that. Melissa (R&J baby) wants fights.