Go see a play this week. 2005

Tonight I saw the one-man play "I Am My Own Wife" and was dazzled. Not only by the story of a fascinating human being, but by the writing, the stagecraft and most of all by Jefferson Mays rich and personal performance. It's at the Curran Theatre on Geary through the 29th and you should go buy yourself some tickets.

It seems like in the theater these days people leap to their feat for the standing ovation for even mediocre performances of weak shows; this one actually deserves it.

Interpret THIS. 2004

When I first woke up this morning it was from a dream of which I remember three things:
1) One of my co-workers going to perform with his band (so far as I know he doesn't even really play an instrument) under a different name ("Rick Conners") and performing for what I understood in the dream to be an office party (for some other company than ours) at which all the guests were dressed on the theme "Caribbean vacation". Many of them were near-nude, pasty white, at least 20 lbs overweight and displaying red acne rashes on their backsides. (This was the first traumatic part of the dream).

2) I was in a forested area and there were some construction vehicles around. My friend Jeff Veen was sitting in the driver seat of a sort of forklift thing and playing the Autumn part from Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the cello. He was really into it doing all kinds of wild things like playing with both hands and doing percussive things with his thumbs. (Clearly an amalgam of the actual playing style of Jess Ivry and Safa Shokai in Bright River). (This was the really great part of the dream).

3) I was being chased by a moose. It bit my hand. (At which point I woke up and found I had kind of rolled onto my arm and was uncomfortable).

See it. 2004

See it. See it. See it.

The Bright River, "a mass transit tour of the afterlife", is amazing. I went to a preview night after which there was a little bit of Q&A and then some mingling over wine and cookies, then a walk up to Mission (from Florida & Mariposa where the theater is), then a cab ride home. Surely time to calm, to back off from the experience, but my heart is still full to bursting, tears still in the corners of my eyes, laughter still on my tongue.

Yes!

Go. Get tickets now. Go see it.

Tim Barsky and the everyday ensemble have a story to tell you.

Tell Your Stories 2004

Fray Day is yours.

Saturday, November 13, 7pm.

A good weekend ahead 2004

I'm feeling better finally. I was at about 50% all day at work (first day back since last Tuesday) but about 6pm really started to feel more normal. What a relief!

Of course the hard part, now that I feel better is to actually want to go to bed on time to get a full night's sleep. It's so exciting not to be exhausted!

Tomorrow night I must do laundry and then I'm sure the rest of the week will include various promotional & planning efforts to ensure an excellent Fray Day Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Tell Your Stories 2004

Under an indigo sky 2004

I could (and probably will) spend days exploring Corey Jackson's sketchbooks.

Every page rings bells, evokes moods, causes things to bubble up in my mind. A Pattern Language, the Moomintroll stories, Alex Grey, the Human Evolution Coloring Book which was one of my textbooks in college, a field in Devon (or was it Cornwall?) with little rabbits and the smell of rain coming or going or both, and what is stranger still - the single chimes becoming a fall of bells - is when I come to a page with what is clearly one of those progressive diagrams of evolution, and then to a page where a man is moving forward blithely to his apparent danger - The Fool - and under his arm is a book whose title is A Pattern Lang...

How odd and wonderful. Particularly when the image which brought that great book to mind doesn't have a thing about it at all.

Corey, if ever we're in the same city, dinner's on me.

(Mum, if there's anyone I've ever seen who could do an illustrated version of Little, Big, including the various editions of Architecture of Country Houses, Corey's it.)

The Life 2004

I have been living one hell of a life the past week and a half. It's been fun, but now I'm tired and needing to take a lazy Sunday to recover. Pride 2004 will just have to carry on without me.

In chronological order:
Suffered massive comment spam attack. Obtained great big set of data to recognize that comment spam pattern even when I only get one isolated message. Very handy for those abuse reports.

Saw Rube Waddell at Cafe Van Kleef. Great band, great bar.

BBQ with my old out-laws (B.J.'s parents). Genetic and official ties aren't the important part; they and B.J., his wife Bev, and her parents are part of my extended family.

Allergy attack prompting this message to my co-workers:

Hi,

I got woken up at 4something in the morning again with these horrible allergies and took the half tablet of Benadryl which doesn't normally make me too drowsy to function, but apparently when combined with either especially bad allergies or that time of day makes it impossible to wake up.

I am now moving sluggishly in the direction of the office ("...what rough beast slouches towards Emeryville...").

Regular allergy sufferers, first, my profound sympathies. Second, how the heck do you cope with this? Do I need to go to the doctor and get some prescription stuff to be on all the time? Do allergy shots help? And how long into summer do you usually suffer?

Representing all the dwarves (with Bashful manifesting in his Tardy aspect and Groggy, Itchy and Scratchy substituting for Greedy, Doc and Happy),

Dinah

Hanging out late at Tantek's place with Min Jung, Matt, Dunstan, Simon and Jane.

Dinner at Crepes on Cole with the WaSPs and party at Tantek's place. (Matt's pictures)

Thought I'd get a good night's sleep to recover from the prior 3 short nights. Allergies woke me up at 4am again.

Back to Cafe Van Kleef for As Is Brass Band (oh joy!) and my delighted introduction to 1 Man Banjo (Sean Lee), about whom you'll be hearing more. Caught ride home with the band and thus reached bed around 3sumpthin.

Set alarm for 7:30a.m. Woke up at 7:28a.m. Had a surprisingly functional and creatively charged day at work.

Expected to come home and go to bed early. Instead went to dinner with Dunstan and Min Jung, joined after a while by Tantek, Matt and Anil. Then we rambled around North Beach and ended up at the Bubble Lounge where champagne, foie gras, and chocolate with strawberries were consumed. (Here's a picture which sums up the decadence of the evening). Some of the party were interviewed by an HBO TV crew for Real Sex. Dunstan expressed a certain preference which I can hardly wait to see the footage of; I think I may want that sound bite as a system error sound. I stroked Matt's head until he became blissful. I got to see Liz, which was a pleasant surprise.

Finally, O joy! Sleeping in.

High tea at The Palace with a bunch of beautiful, intelligent women to celebrate Heather's upcoming wedding. Certain topics were approached and then veered away from ("You can't talk about that here; we're at The Palace!") and Anil would have been thwarted from making certain hand gestures, had he been there.

Went to Kaiser's pharmacy finally and picked up some of their generic Claritin stuff. I look forward greatly to non-sneezing, non-itching nights and days.

Started some food marinating, napped, cooked and then headed out at midnight to NIMBY in Oakland for the Extra-Action Marching Band benefit for their mission of good will from Amsterdam to Sarajevo. Wonderful humans. I got to see a few Burning Man art pieces I'd only enjoyed in pictures before and listened to more great music. Amazingly, I arrived during Freddi Price's second song, "Oh Father". and got to hear his whole set including an extremely-heartfelt version of John Lennon's "God". Wish I'd had the equipment to record that; it was perfect. Yes, Lennon's song when you thought about it, but in that moment, fully Freddi's.

The poor guy had some turbulence in the first part of his set. The power on the stage went out while he was singing, so there was a little dicking around fixing it and then he started belting the song out with no mike and no stage lights and no guitar amp. Just as people were huddled in close, clapping, feeling the raw version, *boink* back comes the power. A cheer from the crowd. Freddi's sideways smile, a grin and he steps up to the mike to really launch into it and *pwing* his guitar string breaks. Blink, blink, and then he roars with laughter. One song with no high string, followed by a quick string change, and then back into it. A great show, most definitely.

Oh, and Extra-Action was huge fun; there were other good bands to be heard (e.g. LOOP!STATION), art & wild outfits to be enjoyed and all the lunatic pleasure of an all-night party. I contributed a vegi dish to the food choices (recipe coming later) and kept the marching band hydrated during their set. At the end of the night, which is to say at 6am this morning, I gave four happy people a ride back into San Francisco and returned the City Carshare car. In bed by just after 7am and slept until 11:30am or so.

I feel pretty good. My legs are tired from standing and stomping my feet on cement all night, but it was fine fine fun. I encourage you to get out and do something. Share yourself. Appreciate what other people have to share. Life is good.

Dream this morning 2004

I am at a bus stop or above-ground Muni station. I think there was more dream before this involving walking down from the hills (Twin Peaks?) but it faded as I woke. There is a woman waiting at the stop, tall black chick in a black down jacket. She looks like one of those tough, streetwise, low income folks you see down by 16th & Mission. A man (played by Mike who I saw at SXSW but don't know and didn't speak to) is talking to her in a soft, friendly voice, confirming something, having her open her coat. She is confident and proud, not resentful. I think perhaps she had her baby with her and he was some sort of social worker.

The dream skips and the woman becomes paler, shorter, the jacket and baby disappear and now I know her to be (ah, how we just know things in dreams!) more of a student/"starving" artist type. Someone is telling me that a guy in our social circle is seeing her (mental image of a guy who looks like an amalgam of Patrick Farley and Matt Mullenweg). He's saying "...but he's posting all this detail about it, what they do sexually, things like that..." and I'm reacting with laughing alarm. Meanwhile I'm looking at her site. My view pulls back and the site is on a screen hanging from the ceiling of the space I'm in. It's sort of like a an old-fashioned train dining car with booths along the windows and a row of small tables down the center. Imagine a combination of the Magnolia Cafe and an F-line trolley car. I'm on one side and standing & working his way along the aisle on the other side is Jeff Veen. I can see him clearly and the faces of the people (including Mike) sitting in one booth he's almost at, but everyone else in the crowded space is just a dark silhouette. He's continuing to talk, but now he's saying, apparently in reaction to something I've said about the interface I'm working with "...yeah, I don't recommend the [forgotten name, don't think it was one I've heard of now] browser anymore...". My sense is that we were lamenting how that software for the Mac was just not reliable enough to compete.

Now I'm at work and I can't remember if the dream went on from there or if that's when I woke up. In any case, I believe the whole scene in the train car was a chat interface and that this might be my first dream in which I've been in both a physical & virtual space simultaneously.

olympia 2004

 

(Found on the web. Shared on Flickr on this date.)

itch_Baham 2004

 

(Found on the web. Shared on Flickr on this date.)

nude-sdraiato 2004

 

rvacapinta commented: "This is Modigliani and it is a great painting."

 

(Found on the web. Shared on Flickr on this date.)

Sir Ian Sunflowers 2002 2004

 

Sir Ian McKellen throwing sunflowers I gave him into the crowd after riding to the end of the parade route and then getting out and dancing down the street twirling them. Lovely man.

 

(Found on the web. Shared on Flickr on this date.)

Young Ian 2004

Ian McKellen

 

(Found on the web. Shared on Flickr on this date.)

friedrich_wanderer-sea-fog 2004

(Found on the web. Shared on Flickr on this date.)

Body square 2004

from the Vigeland sculpture park in Oslo, Norway

 

(Found on the web. Shared on Flickr on this date.)

Now that's service. 2003

At work we send email to the "supplies" mail address to request things. Today I wrote:

Hello,

I would like
- a box of refills for papermate flexgrip ultra fine in blue
- 1 each of that type pen in purple and green
- 3 more pads of the ~3" square post-it notes
- a pony

cheers,
Dinah

In the afternoon, Jem came by with a red envelope. It contained pens and post-it notes on the top of one of which was drawn a really great pony. My pony had a pile of poo behind it and the message "Ponies bring great responsibility."

Later I got an email from her that said:

Done. Sorry, no refills so I gave you regular ol pens, but you're lucky: you got the last pony.
-jem

I really like the people I work with.

Appearing in my new role as The Queen of Swag 2003

Best Picture of 2003 Nomination 2003

This picture by Dean Allen (of Textism) captures more of the magic of childhood than most any other I've seen:

Someone should pay Dean some good money to use this on the cover of an anthology of children's literature. It's as good as that Sargent painting of the girls lighting Chinese lanterns in a garden.

Wicked again 2003

I went and saw the musical Wicked again today and it was great. There was a note in our programs reading

To Our Valued Theatre Goers: Please be aware that Kristin Chenoweth suffered an injury to her neck earlier this week. She is getting better every day, is no longer in severe pain, and does not want to miss a performance. As a result she will be wearing a protective neck collar during the show.

Naturally, in true Galinda style, her white foam medical collar was adorned with a lovely strip of rhinestones.

Afterwards - again a standing ovation and a very happy crowd - I was able to speak briefly to Kirk McDonald, who plays Boq, and to Ben Cameron, who's the tall member of the ensemble who wears the split-color jacket & a skirt in the Shiz scenes. When I told Kirk I thought the show was going to do very well in New York, he said "From your mouth..." He was very pleasant; I wish him great success. I got a bit quieter and more hesitant response from Ben, who, I suspect, isn't as used to people coming up and talking with him after the show or was tired or I was interrupting something. Still I was glad I got the chance to wish him well and let him know I was pleased to see two of my favorite characters from the book, Crope and Tibbett, represented in his skirt.

It's a great show. I hope I can make it to New York and see it. Kirk said they've got a break during which the "muckity-mucks" will rework anything that needs changing and then they'll have 3 weeks of rehersal before opening on Broadway. If you are or can be in New York, I recommend buying tickets now before it sells out.

Making Dream Stock 2003

For better dreams, season your mind before bed with stimulating and unusual imagery and/or writing.

Last night I read more of The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Subsequently, in a dream, I was working on a story with a group - sort of writing it, sort of reading what we already had and rehearsing it for performance - much as Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh did with the actors who worked on their movie The Anniversary Party, the making of and commentary on which I had watched on evenings over the past few days.

My character's name in the story in my dream is "Otto Oxox". I read this on some notes summarizing the characters and key information about them and I mention that because reading in dreams is usually difficult. In this case, I read it in the dream, looked away, looked back and read it again and it still said the same thing: "OTTO OXOX". Maybe uppercase letters are easier to read in dreams.

By the way, Google knows nothing of "Otto Oxox", so it's apparently an escapee of my imagination rather than something learned and forgotten.