Jumbo Snack Pack: Two Entries in One

There is smoke, or steam, or something just so, rising always from the building across the street from me. It is a self-proclaimed Ironworks, which recalls a time when all businesses were suffixed with the word "-works." Waterworks, Metalworks, Widgetworks, Cabinetworks. I am just kidding. There was no such time. There may have been, but I don't know enough about it to make such a generalization!

I have no curtains yet in my new apartment. Yes! I moved. To Brooklyn, land of Kings. And my apartment lies inside one Castle, and I could not be happier in it. These last few weeks have been some of my busiest, which is a loud a brash statement to make at 3:35 on a Monday, but as you can see, I've naried with my blog posts, and they've been like Tim & Eric movies so it's not even some writing. I have to pick out a paint yet, and get my dresser and wine crates, and the curtains, yes, but it's all coming together nicely and neatly.

I like having an above ground train; it usually propels me to read oftener than its below-ground counterparts. Below ground, all I can do is sit and stare or be with music. Reading underground makes me feel weary. I read faster and more productively in natural sunlight, perhaps.

I was in a reading over the weekend, at Fresh Ground Pepper's final event of the year. We did 6 plays in 2 days, all with different casts and directors and playwrights. It was a blast, and it was in Brooklyn, so I got to walk there and back and get a cheesesteak.

I have hosted Speeddating events on pretty much every Sunday night since early June of this year, and this past Sunday we had a very rough one. Everyone was out of sorts and taking it out on me; it escalated in intensity and ridiculousness to the point that some lady yelled "I'm a lawyer!" in my face in order to, I don't know, beat me into validating her fears about life and love? I survived the barrage of angry women hurling their condescension at me, holding their Real-Life Jobs and Real-World Experience over my head like it's my fault that they are even at this event--when all I'm doing is, you know, ringing a bell so guys can rotate and doling out spring rolls and just being really nice to everyone so that maybe they'll be really nice to each other and maybe get over the Hurdle that is Putting Yourself Out There In Order To Get To Know Someone, helping them maybe have the courage to sit with a stranger for a few minutes and maybe possibly find a connection--I survived it, sure, but by the end I was feeling really low.

Dejected and tired and very starving, I shuffled into a pizza place pre-train and I met a fellow from Dallas. He was a Cowboys fan (blech) but we sat with each other and ate our pizza, I told him about my horrible night and he told me about his pretty good one, and we exchanged conversation about hobbies and jobs and salsa dancing and sports and growing up in the Southwest. And he told me something I hear so often, something I have heard from quite a few people lately in various contexts and degrees: You can only have as good a time as the goodness you put forth. You can only find love if you give love to the world. If you go into a situation with a negative energy, you will partake in a negative outcome.

You know, blah blah, The Secret, blah Oprah blah. I think it's true, though, I really do. I could have been weirded out by this guy who approached me in a Ray's Pizza and not talked to him and left, and I would have gone home hungry, in a bad mood, without the reminder he so generously and warmly bestowed upon me.

It really lifted my spirits, making friends with this random guy. He's in my phone as "Adrian, pizza" and maybe I'll see him again, and maybe I won't, but either way, when I'm scrolling through my phone to text Amy or Andrew or Ashley, I will most definitely think of him, and our fearless non-missed connection, and his positive message.

Other Exciting and Happy Things of the Past Few Days!
- Hung out in Queenz with some dears and read a play and drank some wine/whiskey
- Ran into DC! In Union Square. He slipped his book in my bag and we caught up in seconds.
- Dad met Steven Gerrard and Michael Ballack, WHAAAA
- Swiped some dumplings at work today. Savory.
- I start rehearsals tomorrow for a production of Hamlet directed by my dear friend John that will be in February!
- A reading of a musical I am co-writing under the guise of lovely Rob Heller will happen on December 17th at The Cherry Pit!
- I asked for time off from work to go home for Christmas! Oh, and I'm handmaking my gifts this year, and they are baller.
- I have some inkling ideas for my Christmas card. Be ready for one, if I love you. I probably do.
- Tchotchkes

Update Snack

Call me corny or call me sentimental. (You can. Seriously. Both of these things may be true.) But Twelfth Night has been my favorite Shakespeare show since very early memory. It was the first Shakespeare I ever saw, actually; in Telluride, after fishing or playing soccer or something else with my family when I was young, we stumbled upon an evening production in one of their giant parks. It was the scene where Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek and that other guy are hiding in the bushes while Malvolio reads the faulty letter. And my brother literally could not stop laughing. He was laughing so hard through the next few scenes that the usher had to come over him and tell us to calm him down or we would have to leave. I think we ended up leaving. I hadn't scene a production since then, but I did Viola's monologues in high school. And there was the time in Actors and Directors in college, where someone did a scene from it and Mary Robinson laughed so hard that she fell off her chair. The class stopped in horror and a fit of giggles, and from behind the risers in the corner we saw her hand frantically waving us on: "I'M FINE! KEEP GOING."

And the production I saw tonight lived up to all of my expectations and childhood memories. Anne Hathaway was mesmerizing, Audra MacDonald was radiant, Hamish Linklater was da best. I laughed hard (though not as hard as my brother...?), I cried a little (for happy rather than sad), and I felt a distinct surge of joy throughout, and rightness. I had better seats than Angela Lansbury. Opa was probably jealous of me, or he was there, smiling, wondering if she'll ever do a follow-up to Murder, She Wrote.

And tonight was a Full Moon.

Dream Snack

Last night, I had a dream:

A lot of my friends were nominated for Grammys: Neisler, Scoville, Ellie, etc. But the Grammy ceremony was shortened to 4 minutes because of budget constraints- one award per minute, and each award had like 20 nominees. I waited for my friends to return from the 4-minute Grammys in my bedroom, which was large and orange and one of the walls was windows that looked out into a shopping mall. Jeff Ward (??) was at the mall with a girl that I sat at C-Brass last night (table 26) and I invited them into my room, and we all did Kevin Khulke impressions. Mine was, "some singers are GOOOD. but some singers are BAAAD." Which in my dream made like everyone laugh but in real life is actually not something Kevin Khulke has ever said.

Then everyone comes back from the Grammys, and we're all of a sudden outside in someone's backyard facing the ocean. We are sitting at giant tables and there is a giant metal structure behind Amy and Scoville. Scoville won every Grammy, Neisler won one, and Ellie won two. Which means that more than one person could win a Grammy. These are exciting times.

A lot of my friends from home are sitting at the tables: Amy, Sunil, AJ, Cammie Pancakes, a bunch of girls from high school named Katie who, in my dream, sit in a clump all together and only talk about getting or being married. Amy's mom comes out of the house with Sharon Osbourne hair and a giant cake. We all cheer and change out of our Grammy dresses. Some guy in late 90s Oakleys mocks Bodega the cat for looking scared when she runs on two legs. The waves crash, the structure makes an afternoon shadow, the wind blows, I wake up.

Hall and Oate...Meal?????

Halloween costume IDEA #4

Auld Lang Snack

“The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man"

-Robert Burns, on his poem "Auld Lang Syne."

"I mean, 'Should old acquaintance be forgot'? Does that mean that we should forget old acquaintances, or does it mean if we happened to forget them, we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot?".

-Harry, from When Harry Met Sally

Click Below to Watch The Best Use of "Auld Lang Syne," and Probably Cry:

It's a Wonderful Life

fotografia courtesy of googz