random thoughts and plugs

Tonight is preview night for Polaroid Stories.  Preview means it’s basically an open rehearsal where you can come and see the show for free if you’re going to have a hard time coming to see the actual shows on the weekends.  Usually other actors, directors and techies come that night, since they are busy with their own shows on the weekends.  It’ll be interesting.  We haven’t really had an audience yet.  There are parts of this show that get pretty close to the audience.  I’m interested in how they’ll feel.

If you’re in Austin, and you’re wanting to come see Polaroid Stories, here’s the info:

Polaroid Stories
by Naomi Iizuka
Hyde Park Theatre
511 W. 43rd
September 8- October 2
Thurs-Sat @ 8pm
Sundays @ 7pm

Tickets:  $8 student/ACOT  $10 Gen. Admission Sep. 10-19
$10/$12 Sep. 24- Oct. 2
Thursdays are Pay-What-You-Wish
Pay-What-You-Wish can also be done with a pair of socks donated to homeless teens.
Seating is limited.
Call 512.452.6688 for reservations

There’s my plug.  Come see it if you’d like.

I’ve never done a show before that’s so high maintenance.  It takes forty-five minutes for me to get into hair, makeup and costume.  I can’t even do some of the things by myself.  I have to have someone help me out.  Checking my props involves another five minutes or so.  I’ve been so used to comedy– show up, get the set list and go– that I’ve sort of gotten out of the habit of getting ready.  I certainly haven’t worn makeup in a show for quite a while.  It’s making me have to fit in an extra hour in my day to show up on time.

I went on the back porch yesterday and I heard this horrible noise coming from inside the house.  I looked in the window– it was Taylor.  He was just yelping and mewing away.  He usually is such a quiet cat.  He was just staring at me and making these horrible noises.  This morning he did the same thing, and kept rubbing against my hand to pet him.  He was following me from room to room.  This is very un-Taylorlike.  I’m worried that he’s lonely.  Both Eric and I have been out at work and rehearsals quite a bit the past couple of weeks, and this is the first time in Taylor’s life that he’s been really alone.  I’m worried that when we aren’t there he cries like that all the time.  He always runs to the door when we get home and he jumps in the bed with us when I call him and he sleeps with us all night long.

Eric and I have been talking about getting another cat.  I feel really different only having one cat.  I feel like I’m smothering Taylor.  Usually when one cat gets full of petting and walks away with a tail flick, I’ll say, “Well, that’s why I have another one,” and move on to the other cat.  I can’t do that now, and I don’t know if it’s fair to Taylor.

Here’s the thing:  I want another cat.  But I know I can’t have another Lillith.  She really was the yin to Taylor’s yang.  She was a lap cat, he was a playful cat.  She liked to sleep, he liked to run.  They would bathe each other.  They would sleep together.  What if I get another cat and Taylor hates it?  What if they don’t get along?  What if the new cat is a yowler or a biter or a scratcher or a messy cat or one of those unfriendly cats that doesn’t like people?  I can’t deal with that.  I’m worried we won’t give the cat a fair shot the second it doesn’t act like Lillith.  Another thing is we got Lillith and Taylor as a set and they were already grown-up into their cat habits.  They already stayed off counters and shared food bowls.  Do you know what else they do?  They would divide up the litter box.  I’ve never seen this before.  They pee on one side of the box and poo on the other.  They don’t mix.  Both cats agreed that this was how the litter box was going to be used.  This way they would step over the front of the box that contained all of the wet clumpy litter and they would only stand on dry litter, avoiding little bumps, of course.  What if the new cat doesn’t understand Taylor’s system?  He still does that to the box, even though he’s all by himself.  What if the new cat likes Taylor’s toys?  Lillith and Taylor would always divide up their things.  Taylor likes catnip and big fuzzy toys.  Lillith liked shadows and little stringy toys.  They never fought over toys.

I do want another cat, but I don’t think I’m ready to raise a kitten.  We’ve both decided that we are flat-out too busy to raise a new cat right now, and we can’t take the risk of leaving Taylor and the new cat alone for so long right now.  We can’t be there to moderate and facilitate.

So, for now, we’re a one cat household.  But I still find myself referring to Taylor as “The kitties.”

I’m pretty excited.  My Dr. Evil doll should be showing up today.  I also got another City Hunter episode in the mail.  (That means a City Hunter screening this Saturday night Becca, Michael, Chuy, Jeff, Martinique, Weldon, Cathy, et. al… mark your calendars.)  I really like getting packages.  It makes me feel important.  It’s really just a pain in the ass though to our neighbors.  The UPS guy always leaves our packages over there.  They must get worried with some of these things that get left over there.  Bags or boxes of candy, dozens of roses, video tapes, books– I apologized to her this morning for having to hold onto another package for me and she said, “No, it’s kind of funny, really.  I get all excited and then I think, ‘Oh, I know it’s not for me.’”

Thoughts that enter my head before I go to sleep:  What are the Spice Girls doing these days?  I wonder if we have any clean towels.  It’s nice that I haven’t had to hear any Rick Astley songs in years.

Labor Day was spent by Chuy’s apartment’s pool.  Because of this we weren’t really alone in our festivities.  I sat with a couple of my friends to eat a hamburger and overlooked the pool area.  I nodded my head in a certain direction and lowered my voice:  “Do you think someone told that guy that if he wore that Speedo he’d look like Ricky Martin?”

“Hold up,” Michael said, loosening his neck and shoulders, “I’m really bad at this.”

He slowly lowered his head and strained his eyes to one side and sort of twitched his head in the direction of the offending swimsuit.  He whipped his head back:  “Yeah.”

Speedo man got up and jumped in the pool and looked at all of us as he pushed his bits of hair out of his forehead.  He wasn’t saying a word, but his eyes gave it away:  “Why didn’t all of the ladies jump in when they saw me go in here?  Perhaps they did not see what I was wearing.”

I’ve never watched a man get out of a pool wearing a Speedo.  I’ve never really wanted to.  It’s not on any list of mine somewhere.  I wasn’t even meaning to this time.  I was leaning forward to grab my towel when Speedo guy comes barreling up the pool stairs towards us, water draining from this weird bulgy thing in between his legs.

It didn’t look human.  It looked–

Did you ever play with watersnakes?  These were these toys that were latex filled up with water and you’d hold on to them and they’d flip around in your hands.  This looked like someone had taken his little man and swirled it all around in this pouch and then convinced him that he was supposed to wear it this way.

It looked so painful that I had an involuntary reaction.  Speedo guy comes full-speed out of the water towards me and I jump back and turn my head shouting, “Oh, man!  Jeee-zus!  Ow!”

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that Speedo Pseudo Ricky Martin got just what he was looking for on that exchange.  He probably thought I was so spellbound by his little piece of lycra that I was going to fall to my knees if I looked at it any further.

Listen.  I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do here.  I’m no authority.  I don’t have large glasses and a dog named Magic.  All I know is what pleases and offends my eye.  If you are a diver, if you are a model, if you have that part of your lower body where your hips kind of do that cut in-dimple-thing that means you have a really strong stomach– you may wear a Speedo.  In fact, you probably should be wearing Speedos.  Since not that many people wear them, certain men get into their head that they must really be a man if they can put one of those things on and parade around.  Many women have not purchased many bikinis because we just know certain truths about our bodies concerning light and shadows and gravity– if we can figure these things out, so can you.

But I’m serious.   If you’ve got those little cuts in muscle right under your hip bones– please put on the Speedo.  I’ll buy you one.

And I felt bad for Speedo Pseudo Ricky Martin because I think he was misled by someone.  It wasn’t that he had a really bad body or something.  It was like… it was like… he had so much hair on his body that for a second you weren’t sure if he was wearing a bathing suit at all?  Do you know what I mean?  It was like he had all of these balloon animals around his house and he decided that he really just wanted to go swimming with them but didn’t want to show anyone he was swimming with them so he shoved them in his little shorts.  I don’t blame him for what he did.  I’m sure he was misled.

But none of you now have any sort of excuses.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Summer is almost over.  Lets keep the remaining days as beautiful and sexy as summer was meant to be, okay?