Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

13 September 2004

Cumulative Update

I'm imbibing Honey Wheat beer made by a company called Lawson Creek that I purchased for less than $1 a bottle.  And it's good.  Who knew?


My sister just called, and a I got a lovely email from my dear friend Jamie (Other) who is shacking up (down?) in AZ (oz? well, over the rainbow at any rate).


I had a job interview that actually went well today.  I didn't know those were possible anymore?


I am reading a delightful book by Alan Cumming, the actor, a name you should all recognize.  It is called Tommy's Tale and it is infinitely clever if at times slightly-earnest-while-pretending-not-to-be. True lack of earnestness (read: coolness) is so difficult.  But it is a worthy first novel.


Am I really waiting for my real life to start?  If so, I think that might be okay.  I am only a very young man, as it is.


One of the reasons I simply adore spending time with Linda Bisesti and her husband Matt is that they don't mind trashing other people, even people for whom they might feel a slight fondness.  It is important to remember that people's talents are quite separate from the people themselves, and Linda and Matt walk this fine line very well.  They know how to trash people and say very nice things about them in the same breath.  It's quite a gift, really.  It was so lovely at their house yesterday.  And when I'm with Linda and Matt we talk about the theatre, and not just this theatre and that theatre and Cal Poly theatre and the theatre we're each doing, but the state of Theatre with a capital T.  It feel so good to be able to talk about it.  We discussed community-based theatricalities and my theory that it is a dead theatre... or one that is dying on its feet if not already kaput.  Anna Deavere Smith and Culture Clash and Moisés Kaufman are wonderful, worthy examples, and their theatre is new and arresting, but they are poets.  So much community-based theatre is so much wanking, and so much is by people who can barely string a phrase together, and so they choose to use the words of real people.  Because it's oh so real and oh so important and oh so fucking precious.  (Send me your retorts; I expect to be fought on this.  Don't be shy.)  But I'm serious.  It is the photography of theatre, and like so much photography it is the art of the untalented.


Deborah's call was very juicy.  Chisme is so very nice.  Especially in the evening.  I am thinking of baking cookies tomorrow afternoon.  I wonder.  Will it be too hot for that?  Let's hope not.


On the set designer: I called him today to see if he'd gotten a copy of VAL and he picked up the phone with this greeting "Hi Aaron."  This is someone to whom I have spoken one other time in my entire life.  This kid and I will be fast friends when we finally meet because I already love him.  I talked to Sally today and she, thankfully, organized a meeting with my set designer and possibly my lighting designer.  The lighting designer part is possibly because I told her to tell him that if he hasn't read the play he ought not come.  There are two possible outcomes to this ultimatum and both of them are positive to my mind.  He (a) doesn't come to the meeting at all and I have a productive meeting with my set designer and stage manager or he (b) reads the play (gasp from the chorus!) and has things to say at the meeting.  I'm actually not sure which I would prefer, but (b) seems highly improbable, so it really doesn't matter which I'd choose if I had my druthers.


Does one capitalize druthers?  What are druthers anyway.  I must look it up.

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