Falling Asleep Alone: It's Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

What is UP people?! I haven't had many interesting things to say on here. Actually, I don't right now either. (HA like your blog is interesting! HAAAAA! It isn't.) I've been pretty busy getting 18 callbacks and no shows so that has been keeping me very occupied and obviously VERY HAPPY.

.......

Someday, y'all. Someday, I will not only make it to the 8th and last callback but I will receive a phonecall and a contract in the mail, which I will sign with a flourish and possible loopy letters and curly Q's and I shall take a digital picture of it and post it here for all to see. And you will all comment your CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE A HERO AND AN AMAZING ACTRESS and I will humbly shake my head as I type back "Oh no no, it's nothing really, but thank you, thank you EVER so much."

Until that day I will continue to blog about "Stupid Stuff That Crosses My Mind" and also "Random Things I Did Last Night". OH! Now that you mention it...

I was "buffer" for Lindsay last night and was dragged to Little Italy to see a dance concert in a theater on the corner of Mulberry and Canal. I was Buffer because Lindsay's ex was also in the piece (not dancing thank GOD because you know, he doesn't really have a DANCER physique so it's PRETTY DAMN GOOD HE BROKE UP WITH HER BECAUSE HE ISN'T WORTH IT LINDSAY ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME) but his improv comedy group did a few pieces in between the Really Deep Modern Dance Pieces so that the whole evening would not be Dry and Depressing As All Get Out.

I was very torn about this so-called dance company concert blah-blah-people-are-performing-and-I'm-not thing. This was for 2 reasons:

1--I wanted to make fun of the show very badly because it was on the border of Little Italy and Chinatown and it was modern dance and involved a piece about a farm where the dancers dressed up as cows which, what? BUT I COULD NOT BE THAT BITTER BECAUSE...

2--The dancing was actually GOOD and the tiny little 50-seat house was SOLD OUT? and I had to pay $18 to go? And why are there girls dancing around as cows on Canal Street and why are people CLAPPING and WHY DID I NOT HAVE THIS IDEA FIRST???????

Lindsay and I have decided to get our shit together and freaking CREATE art, people, CREATE and stop waiting for directors to cast me in something because seriously? Not. Happening. So. It was great to be INSPIRED and touched that young people can do other things in Little Italy besides eat ravioli.

Though *I* ate ravioli before the show as James and Lindsay and I went out to dinner a little farther down on Mulberry Street before we watched the dance concert, which was entitled "Illuminate". We also split a bottle of wine on empty stomachs and so let's just say after 2.4 glasses of wine, when I sat down in the theater, everything was QUITE illuminated. For real. Actually, maybe I wasn't so much inspired by their art and their cows and stuff as I was just plain drunk. But the ravioli kicked in and the alcohol wore off and I was STILL inspired. So that's saying something right? Mooooooo!

Except the first dance piece about girls' self-image which involved chairs and no music and dramatic lifts? Was stupid. And that was both me AND the alcohol talking.

After the show, Lins and I split from The Dreaded Ex And His Posse and walked separately to a Japanese lounge (right up the street from CHINAtown, whaaat?) but we went the wrong way on Mulberry Street, despite a MAPQUEST MAP printed out in the program. Somewhere between Mott Street and Hester Street and Chinese Gang Street, a large hairy homeless man with bright red air-traffic-controller headphones came up a little too close for comfort and excitedly screamed DON'T BE SCARED into our faces.

I'm not going to lie. After that? I was scared. Where was our token male companion James? Why oh why were we walking on Mulberry Street after dark? What was GOING ON?

We made it to the lounge which was GREAT because I was out like a grown up and appropriately had two seltzers with lemon while Lindsay downed some fruity alcoholic beverages and smoothly talked to her Ex. Things were great and I think she handled the evening with grace and maturity and confidence. Put ME in a room with my ex-boyfriend? I laugh too hard and make inappropriate jokes and blush bright red and pretty much want to crawl under the floor and die because I probably have a HUGE stalk of broccoli in between my two front teeth too. Lindsay? is so much cooler than me.

And then, she called me at 2:30 am in a rather teary state, relating a story of her and The Ex after I left them to get home on the train and my heart broke a little. She was just sobbing to me about the pain of falling asleep alone and I didn't know what to say. Earlier in the night, she had given me encouragement about the very same thing: sleeping alone and having no one around sometimes is SO beyond painful but that's kind of what you have to go through in order to find love and happiness eventually. It's all annoying and hurtful crap but in the end, you CAN find peace on the other side.

I just repeated into the phone the same words she had uttered to me a few hours earlier. I tried hard to believe the words I spoke, that sleeping alone is hard but she'll be alright, that if she needs to cry and hug her pillow, that that is okay too. Her sobbing subsided and when I hung up with her, she had big plans to get a big tall glass of water and climb into bed. I told her I thought that was best.

I guess even the strong ones have those nights where they just can't shake the loneliness, when they really have to cave in and call someone and cry themselves to sleep.

Not-So-Confidential to Lindsay: I believe that for you, this time will pass you by and you will heal and you will call me up at 2 am instead to talk about a wonderful date you just had with a brand new, beautiful guy. And I will be here for you for that, too.

And for the record, let's make sure the new guy is like...5'11 minimum and at LEAST 25 years old with his shit together, okay? Okay. I love you.

Peace.

You Know It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp

I'd like to thank the Academy for having a live performance of "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" from Hustle & Flow on the 78th Annual Academy Awards tonight. It took me approximately 28 hours for that song to get out of my head when I watched the film last week. And now? Thanks to the Oscars (which, Jon Stewart? I love you?) I now have the song in my head AGAIN and will continue to nod my head and rap it when I so choose. This should be my new theme song. Hard out here for a pimp INDEED.

It's hard out here for a pimp because I had to go see my little brother in "Godspell", the high school musical. That wasn't hard per se; I was actually looking forward to it as "Godspell" was my first high school musical! 9th grade Laura! She has braces and is so nervous but she gets to sing "Day By Day" and OH IT IS A GOOD CHRISTIAN PLAY AND HER MOM AND DAD ARE SOOOOOO PROUD!

The hard part was that we arrived a few minutes late. Well. I'd say one minute and 30 seconds late. The fault being my mother's because she decided to wipe down the counters at 2:53 pm. It is a special talent my mom possesses, a hidden urge if you will, that strikes when we urgently need to leave the house. Growing up, play practice would start in 7 minutes or a girl scout meeting in 3 and I would purse my lips and try not to scream and stamp my feet, tapping my shoe impatiently at the door. My mother would then throw up her hands and say "One second! I'm totally ready!" and then proceed to throw in an entire load of laundry, fold what was in the dryer, empty the dishwasher, run out the door, promptly forget her car keys and have to run back inside to get them.

And so my parents and I made it in my car at approximately 2:55, leaving us 5 minutes to get to the high school, park, find our seats and watch my brother run around stage in a red bandana and bell bottoms, which he did, I might add, with great aplomb. We arrived and were told it was "just about to start", and a pimply 15 year old boy, our "usher", instructed us to follow him to our seats.

"Godspell" starts with a "Prologue" that involves eight soloists singing a various philosophical statement by Jean-Paul Sartre or Da Vinci or Socrates. In this production, the soloists appear on the steps in the aisles of the audience, eventually making their way on stage.

You sense what happened right? You get what went down, don't you?

In the middle of groping our way to our LAST ROW SEATS up these ENORMOUSLY RIDICULOUS STEPS, we passed by a girl standing on the stairs and BOOM a spotlight was upon us and her and she began to sing something like "Atheistic-existentialism which I represent..." I quickly shielded my face away from the ENTIRE AUDIENCE and couldn't help myself before blurting out "Jesus CHRIST!!!!!!!!" My mother then pushed me forward out of the light and hissed an "Oh my GOD" before realizing she had stepped out of her clog and now had to make her way back down the steps to retrieve it.

My father of course, unassumingly made his way to his seat, quite oblivious to the entire thing, not even pausing to say "excuse me" to the people we had to push past in our row because we were again in the LAST THREE SEATS POSSIBLE IN THE ENTIRE AUDITORIUM. I had become what I most hated above all things: a disrupting, loud, late-to-the-show audience member. After taking three deep breaths and allowing the embarrassed flush to drain from my face, I settled in to watch the show.

Backstory: Since I've been doing regional plays since I was 11 or so and have pursued it diligently ever since, my parents have seen a lot of theatre. They were there at my debut in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" when I was 11 and in the children's chorus and did STEP-TOUCH-STEP-TOUCH with grand flourish and vigor. They sat on the edge of their seat cringing as I stepped out in black leather Sandra Dee gear in "Grease" and I assume they tried not to laugh at my attempt to both act sexy and have heavy metal brackets covering my teeth. They yawned their way through a terrible production of "Children of Eden" in college and jumped to their feet at the end of my last show in Buffalo, clapping and cheering.

These experiences have made my parents hard theater critics. It's not like they'd never been to the theater before I was part of it, it's just that they were immersed in it for so long that they have the lingo down. They now NEED to be impressed and are appropriately disappointed when they aren't.

They used to mock me as I picked apart terrible productions and terrible actors.

"Be nice!" my mother would warn me and I would sit with my mouth shut and try not to mutter criticism.

But now? My mother does it WITH ME. She is a seasoned theater-goer. She has informed opinions--she finds "The Full Monty" amusing, she HATES "Jesus Christ Superstar" (because it makes Mary Magdalene look like she was Jesus' lover which she WASN'T) and she LOVES everything by Stephen Schwartz, especially "Pippin". Heck, my mom was almost the lead in her high school production of "Mame" but she admits, she "didn't have the vocal chops".

You can imagine my glee as "Godspell" had barely started and my mother began to express her irritation.

"You'd think an USHER would know that a soloist is going to be on those steps!?"

"I know. He obviously had NO CLUE what was going on. And if we were in the last row," I angrily wonder, "Why wouldn't he just take us in the BACK DOOR and lead us down ONE STEP!?"

This is a HIGH SCHOOL production.

With high school ushers.

And yet my mom and I feel wronged and misled as if seated incorrectly in the orchestra section of "Wicked". We aren't alone. My friend Lindsay just directed 5th and 6th graders in a production of "Once On This Island". Upset at one of their last rehearsals, she sat them down and told them not even to SPEAK to her, just to GO HOME, that she was APPALLED and DISGUSTED at the rehearsal she had just witnessed.

Yes, these are KIDS we are talking to and about but seriously? If we don't start now, when will they learn? FOCUS. DISCIPLINE. TRUE GUT-WRENCHING EMOTION PEOPLE. Learn how to act. So what if you're 11? And if you're not even in the show, LEARN HOW TO LEAD PEOPLE TO THEIR SEATS SANS SPOTLIGHT.

And the show is rolling and the teenagers are belting their hearts out. We are good quiet audience members. Sort of.

"She sounds good but she needs to lose weight," my mother whispers. I agree emphatically.

"What is that boy DOING with his physicality!?" I hiss. She nods.

And on and on. We point out my brother's red bandana and watch him when we can spot him among the cast. I have to say, his mad dancing skillz were impressive. We all agree Judas Iscariot is the worst actor in the history of the world. Jesus, on the other hand, is great though my brother was originally displeased at the casting. I remember him coming home from school when the cast list was posted.

"It's all wrong," he stated. "The Jesus is fat."

"Well," I said, trying to find the right words, "Maybe Jesus WAS fat. He can sing the part, it doesn't really matter what he looks like."

My mother piped up from the dining room, "Actually, if we analyze what Jesus ate and how much He walked, it's pretty much historically inaccurate to say He could've been fat."

So much for tolerance and understanding.

But I like the Jesus and mom does too and it's a combination of nostalgia and PMS as I sob my way through the crucifixion. Sure, maybe the Jesus was a little chubby, but He taught PARABLES y'all and told you to LOVE EVERYONE ELSE EVEN YOUR ENEMIES and then they murdered Him. MURDERED HIM ON A FENCE and not one little teenager did anything about it. They just whined around the stage and then carried Him away singing "Long Live God".

Geez. I need to get myself to some real theater where acne-prone girls who wear Ugg boots and fail pre-calculus aren't on stage crucifying Jesus.

Seriously.

Peace.