The Heights - by the numbers

Tonight will be the last night I spend in my house in the Heights. Tomorrow I'll be sleeping in a different house in a completely different part of town. More on that later. As a farewell to the place that has been my 'hood for half my life, I thought I'd do a recap by the numbers.

*consecutive years in the Heights: 17
*places lived: 2
*boyfriends consumed: 4 (the last one is still kicking)
*plays written: 5
*vows to become vegetarian: 1
*months spent vegetarian: 1.5
*bicycles stolen from me: 2
*bicycles stolen by me: 0
*jobs held: 14
*dogs raised: 3
*children raised: 0
*average number of bags of candy given out each Halloween: 8
*speeding tickets: 1 (on my 30th birthday)
*complaints about valet-only restaurants and the destruction of bungalows wrought by the yuppies: is infinity a number?
*4th of Julys spent on the Sawyer Street bridge watching the fireworks while straddling a bike and openly sipping a beer: ~10
*4th of Julys spent standing on the sidewalk in front of Satellite Lounge watching the fireworks and surreptitiously sipping a beer: 1
*hurricanes that arrived as expected: 1
*tropical storms that stranded me on the other side of I-10 overnight: 1
*family holidays hosted: 4
*burns from hosting family holidays while drinking too much wine: 1
*memories made: innumerable

I'll miss you, old friend. But I've got shit to do.

one flu over the cuckoo's nest

I rarely get sick. Maybe once every couple of years. So when I found myself in the throes of whatever nasty illness enveloped me last week, I felt like I was an inch tall. It wasn't the flu but something more nasty and longer lasting. My voice sounded like Kathleen Turner drank a pot of scalding hot coffee, removed the ensuing blisters from her throat with a small metal rake and then gargled salt water. I have coughed so much my abdomen is sore. But I can finally breathe through my nose again. I feel like I can complete a thought now that my brain is getting enough air.

Even though I can complete a thought, that doesn't mean my brain is ready to come out of hibernation. So instead of writing something pithy, I thought I'd share a few hot links for you to check out.

Fuck You, Penguin
This is a wonderful balance to saccharine sweet cutie patootie animal sites and youtube videos.

Kickstarter
A place to fund interesting projects. Hey, the NEA no longer gives out individual grants...

Advanced Style
I have the fantasy that some day I'll dress fashionably (which is very different from dressing in fashion, which I never hope to do). The great thing about aging is that you - or at least I - care less and less about what other people think. That frees you to wear fingerless knitted gloves and 80 bracelets if you wanna. I especially love the dapper gents on this site.

this is not a review, and then it is

This is not a review of the Tamarie Cooper Show that is currently playing at Stages. I don't do reviews of other people's shows. I will say that it is funny as hell and my stomach actually hurt after. I can't remember laughing that hard in a theatre in a long time. Maybe at a Paul Mooney concert, but that's stand up. Slight difference.

I will, however, review my experience in the lobby. My friend and I had been standing in line for five minutes or so, patiently waiting to pick up our tickets, when an obnoxious woman jumped ahead of us just as we approached the counter. She then called to her girlfriends to join her - in front of us. She's getting various sets of tickets for her various sets of friends when my friend says something about how rude and obnoxious she's being. (While this is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to come out of my mouth, it was totally UNexpected coming out of his.) She turned around and said, "I'm a board member here. I get preferential treatment." Isn't that delightful? Especially considering we weren't there to see a show at Stages, we were there to see a show by The Catastrophic Theatre in a space at Stages.

Someone should let her know: if you're truly that important, you don't have to bother with being in line at all because someone will slide your tickets onto your palm right after you walk in the door. If you have to announce your specialness to the world, it is, in fact, not so.

Also, the AC wasn't working well in the lobby or in the theatre (maybe because it was 100 degrees outside). The fact that Tamarie's show was THAT funny in a hot theatre space is saying something. People can't hear in a dark theatre, and they generally can't laugh in a hot one. You should go see the show before it closes - it's playing this weekend and next. And wear something cool.

raise up off these N.U.T.s

(Written last week)
For a while now I've been decidedly avoiding knowing something on a conscious level. It's been taunting me, trying to pipe up on occasion, but I've managed to suppress the thought. Until now. It's time I faced it, no matter how scary the reality of it is.

For whatever ungodly reason, the play that I'm trying to write (the full length) wants a couple of SONGS. NO! NO! NO! I think this is why I haven't made any progress on the script over the past couple of months. I have five or six scenes written. I know the other three or four scenes that need to be written. But I'm stuck. And I keep coming back to this horrible, horrible thought that there's a little song and dance number that is dying to be added to the end of scene one. And in one of the scenes that I haven't put on paper yet.

You have no idea how upsetting this is. I don't want to write that kind of play. I don't know how to write that kind of play. But, evidently, I have to write that kind of play just to get this thing into somewhat of a finished format. My hope is that I'll add whatever songs (!) I have to and in so doing will unblock myself and get on with it. Then, hopefully, I can remove the songs from the final version of the script, and it can be our little secret.

(written today)
I had jury duty yesterday. That process involved me sitting in the jury room from 9:30AM until 2:45PM waiting to be dismissed. We did get a one-hour break for lunch, so I ate in the basement of the police station next door. It was just as lovely as it sounds. A trustee looked at me funny, so I shivved him. I always care a spare shiv in my backpack, just in case. They're quite useful.

While sitting there waiting, I spent some time working on this musical bullshit. And boy did the ideas fly. Always a sign that I'm on the right path. I even came up with a few lines. They are marvelously dark and ridiculous. No one will ever want to produce this thing, but I can tell that I'm going to have fun writing it. It's always good to expand your horizons, so, if nothing else, this is a writing exercise. And I still hope the songs can be cut out of the play later without harming the overall structure. We'll see.

I'm just happy to be moving forward again. Maybe this is why my headache went away.

[I obviously had such a hard time with this idea that I couldn't even post this blog when I originally wrote it. Now that some funny (and appropriate for the story) ideas are coming, I feel better about it. Somewhat.]

yin/yang

- Sometimes when I'm listening to really mellow classical music in the car, I feel like Hannibal Lecter (you either know the scene I'm talking about or you don't - I couldn't find it on YouTube). Not like I want to kill and then eat people (or vice-versa). More in the sense of: I'm listening to what should be soothing music, yet there is a winding up of energy in my body that wants to burst out. Only my winding up is released in a totally non-violent manner - usually a shower of words/thoughts thrust upon unsuspecting coworkers or blog readers. This does not happen when listening to classical music that is full of robust energy/emotion. Just the quiet stuff. Perhaps I should change the station.

- It's a yin/yang thing. I have a distinct memory of sitting with my friend Jim at Diedrich's Coffee (RIP) doing the NY Times crossword one late morning when a friend of his who'd just finished teaching a yoga class stopped at the table. She was so fucking zen, her words didn't come tripping off the tongue - they sort of dripped off. One droplet at a time. And then took about 30 seconds to fall to the floor. While on an intellectual level I could appreciate how relaxed and at-one-with-the-universe this chick was, she made my heart rate increase. Seriously - I felt a direct rise in my energy to balance the black hole she was creating. Perhaps this is why I like people who think fast and talk fast.

trip to California, story 2

We went to California in May, and it is now August. Sadly, I've only managed to tell one story about the trip. Here's another. Maybe I'm keeping you alive by never finishing my stories, like in that Twilight Zone episode. But probably not.

I do extensive planning before we travel. That planning turns into a three-ring binder full of maps, menus, pre-paid tickets to things, a rough itinerary for each day, etc. We are free to deviate from the plan (and do, often, so quit looking at me like that), but it helps having a guideline when you're in a place you're not that familiar with. It also mostly keeps you from wasting money and time on shitty meals or destinations that don't live up to the hype.

For the San Francisco part of our trip to California, I didn't do a lot of research into the mass transit system. Figured, they have buses, they have a subway, what's to figure out? Yeah.

We were staying in North Beach, which is a stone's throw from Chinatown. It was also pretty much a straight shot, by bus or on foot, down to the Financial District where we would catch the train for points further away. I didn't look into the bus routes that deeply and instead just picked what looked like the shortest journey. Had I done a bit of research, I would have realized that the bus route I chose was ridiculously, dangerously, stupidly over-full at all hours of the day and night. The first time we rode this bus (the number 30, I think), we crammed our asses on board, feeling like giants next to all of the tiny Asian people who were already on. James almost fell on top of me when a very aggressive, loud guy at the front of the bus started literally pushing people, with his body and his hands, behind the yellow line at the front. He was yelling as if we were in the midst of an asteroid attack and the driver needed to put the pedal down in order to save our lives but the bus wouldn't go into gear until the yellow line was unmolested by someone's foot or rear end. We were asshole-to-elbow, as the saying goes, mashed together like a lump of living bologna.

After about 15 minutes of creeping along the very populated Stockton Street, listening to this guy yell and watching him get into fights with old men, we decided to get off the bus and hoof it down to the subway. We walked slightly faster than the bus traveled and got to the financial district just ahead of it. We got on the subway, and, since I hadn't done any research into our mass transit options, we were amazed when the subway car climbed up out of the earth and drove on the street like a bus. It was a really cool experience that I wasn’t expecting, and I would think it would be cathartic for NYers and others who ride the subway every day to ride the train in SF and emerge from the depths into sunshine. Wish fulfillment.

So we were riding on the subway that was now above ground when a guy with tattoos got on. Not a sprinkling of tattoos - a monsoon of them. And they were thematically related. Here, see if you can figure the theme out:
- 666
- picture of the generally accepted version of what Satan looks like
- devil horns
- what was supposed to look like flesh torn from the back of his head
- etc.

He was dressed in black, head to toe, carrying a black bowling bag that I'm pretty sure contained a human head. Or, I should say, I was pretty sure of that because this guy cut a mean swagger and his eyes looked scary crazy. Then I noticed the shoes.

He was wearing these little black sneakers with skulls on them. I can't remember the brand, but they looked like sort of like this only in black suede. And the illusion was broken. See, scary footwear would have been some greasy old black combat boots, the kind of shoes you can picture stepping on and in messy things. His little skull shoes were a joke. He was too accessorized. He was wearing shoes that I'm sure a thousand suburban skate punks and chubby goth kids were wearing at the same moment. I pictured him sitting at a computer at the library, searching through page after page of search results on Zappos.com, looking for just the right skull-themed footwear. (There's an amazingly large variety of shoes with skulls on them, by the way, as I found out when trying to find a link for this blog.) So whatever hold he had on me for the brief moment that I found him intimidating dissipated as soon as I noticed the shoes.

(While in Big Sur, I sat on the deck at our cabin, drank wine and wrote some notes to myself with the intention of eventually blogging about this stuff. I have plenty more stories to write.)

sneaking suspicion

I have a sneaking suspicion that some people are not, in fact, doing what their facebook/twitter updates say they are.

drag queens and horse heads

On the 610 Loop near N. Shepherd Friday evening, I saw a Caprice Classic with vanity plates that read: SUGARY. The driver was an old, bald white man. Pimp? Wife's car? Someone who enjoys people like me driving up next to them, smiling and nodding?

Later that night, I saw my friend Dennis perform (for the first time in years) in the Mildred's Umbrella production of Last Easter. He plays a British drag queen, and he has to do a lot of singing - all of this in a space that is very intimate. He was just a couple of feet from the first row, yet he pulled it off with grace and talent. I've only known Dennis as a director (and my partner in the burger journey), so it was very exciting to see him in a new role.

A group of us checked out the show together, and we shared our worries before it started. What if Dennis is a terrible actor? Or, worse, just mediocre? Not that he's given anyone a reason to think he can't act, but you just never know. And he knows me well enough to recognize a lie, so I was hoping for the both of us that he'd do well. And he did! I was so happy to see him perform, and I suggest you check out the show. Though it's about a woman dying of cancer (a subject that typically makes me run away from the theatre), it's a consistently funny script and a great production. Go Dennis!

Even later that night, we checked out Horse Head Theatre's happening CEREMONY. It was in an old warehouse on Navigation, a far cry from Gremillion Art Gallery where Dennis' show is being performed. CEREMONY was a sensory experience that involved booze. Lots and lots of booze. It was one of those things where you just had to be there to get the deal. I'm not going to try to summarize it here.

I'm very excited about the new theatre groups that are coming up in Houston and watching the successes of established groups like Mildred's Umbrella. You can see some amazing shows in this city for $20 or less. And you should.

notes

If I ever refer to myself as the "princess of Houston theatre" - or the princess of anything, really, except maybe sarcasm - please feel free to kick me in the ass. Hard.

I can't do the speed bag at the gym for a bit because I rubbed the skin off on the side of my left hand when I worked out Monday night. I'm now forced to either put the hand wraps on or wear my biking gloves in order to protect my hands. Nerd.

If you want to eat a healthy lunch, check out Bowl on lower Richmond between 59 and Montrose. It shares a wall with the bar Absinthe. You choose 10 ingredients for your salad (they have about 60 to choose from) plus a cheese and a dressing. Awesome, fresh and healthy. And the soup is good, too.

If you want to lose your appetite (while being oddly hungry), check out this link.

broke my own rule

Useful ideas often pop into my head when I'm trying to fall asleep. Friday night (after a few too many drinks, admittedly) I found the solution to a particularly vexing problem I'm having with the play I'm writing. It was such a ridiculous - yet perfect - concept, I was sure I'd remember it the next day. I didn't do what I usually do - get up to write it down. You can guess what happened. So now I'm faced with having to drink my fill again in hopes that the idea comes back to me. I'm not optimistic because that's not how these things usually work, but in the name of science I'll give it a go. This play is kicking my ass, by the way. I'm too much in my head and not enough about the writing it down part. This may be the most absurd thing I've ever written, and I have to make sure I get the tone just so.

Joined the UH gym last week. I have been enjoying my morning walks but needed to up the ante. The gym is ridiculously huge. And very clean and modern, including a two or three story rock climbing wall. Yeah, no chance in hell. My last gym experience was the downtown Y a few years ago. I got used to working out with a bunch of old queens who were wearing really tight shorts - the youngsters at the UH gym cut a different swagger. A gym is a gym, mostly, and I have no doubt I'll come to enjoy my time at this one as long as I can get over the whole room full of people on treadmills not going anywhere thing that always makes me feel slightly ridiculous. We don't have to run from lions or the Amish or whatever, and it's too hot to run outside, so you do what you must. Oh, and they have a speed bag! I haven't worked out on one of those since the boxing gym days a decade or so ago. Evidently it's like riding a bike. I'll probably leave the hand wraps at home, even though they make things so much better (keeping your knuckles in alignment and all that). Might be a little like wearing a helmet on the elliptical machine.